Overlay
by Hardcore Heathen
Summary: Permanent Hiatus, but I submitted an outline for what I would have done as the final chapter. During the battle at Wave, Naruto fails to dodge Haku's senbon. They strike him directly in the stomach, and the world will never be the same because of it.
1. Poorly Aimed Volley

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

Author's Notes: Well, this is my first major fanfiction. I've got a lot of things planned, and this story is going to be one of less than a hundred Naruto fanfics over 100k words once I finish it, which I have promised myself I will do. There are no confirmed pairings, and the only one I've even thought of would be a het pairing for Naruto. All chapters will begin with a quote related to the chapter. On with the show!

_There is a beast in man that should be exercised, not exorcised._ - Anton Szandor LaVey

**Overlay**

**Chapter One**

Naruto groggily opened his eyes, wincing as the agony of dozens of non-lethal puncture wounds made themselves known. Rolling over and trying, unsuccessfully, to keep the needles from digging any deeper into his legs and back, he saw that hunter ninja, Zabuza's apprentice, down on the ground. Focusing blearily on something far closer to him, he saw Sasuke's legs and shorts, ridiculous bandages to the knee and all. Sasuke's voice came down to him from out of his field of vision. Naruto couldn't muster the energy to look up.

"Damn, no matter how many times I warn you, you _still_ keep getting in my way," Sasuke snorted arrogantly.

Unable to let a barb like that go, Naruto jerked his head up, ready to retort. "Sasuke! You -" he stopped in shock, a disturbing image reflecting in his blue eyes. A collar of senbon needles was clearly visible on Sasuke, even over the massive collar on the Uchiha's shirt. So were a dozen others, piercing Sasuke's chest, legs, arms...he heard Sasuke gag, and blood splattered onto the ground in front of the fatally wounded raven.

Sasuke turned around, eyes unfocused. "Wipe that look off your face, dead last."

Naruto turned from Sasuke to the enemy ninja's body. Sasuke was standing in a straight line between him and Naruto. His eyes widened even further, and he felt tears well up as every memory of Sasuke, from glaring at him that day in the Academy to leaning on him as they walked back from their tie at the tree climbing exercise, flashed through his mind.

"Wh-Why?" was all he could think of.

"Hn. I don't know; my body just moved on its own. I used to _hate_ you, you know..." Sasuke answered, leaning forwards and panting, trying to catch the breath that just wouldn't come.

"Why? Why did you...why...me?" Naruto stuttered, still not comprehending.

His only answer was more blood splattering to the ground and Sasuke falling backwards. Naruto caught him, ignoring the pain as some of the senbon imbedded in Sasuke dug into his side. Sasuke stared up at the sky, eyes beginning to glaze over.

"I swore I wouldn't die until I killed my older brother...thought the oath would save me...but don't you dare die, idiot." Sasuke closed his eyes and went completely limp in Naruto's arms, a final sigh escaping his lips.

"Is this the first time a comrade of yours has died? Such is the path of a shinobi," came the enemy ninja's voice from in front of Naruto. He kept staring down at Sasuke's lifeless body, unable to comprehend it. Sasuke was _dead_.

An unthinking rage welled up, burning his numb grief into liquid-hot fury. He carefully laid Sasuke down on the ground, turning red, near-mindless eyes on the ninja who'd taken the life of his first and only friend. "**I'm never going to forgive you for this,**" he said, voice oddly deep and filled with an ancient malevolence.

The enemy ninja didn't bother waiting, and loosed another volley of chakra-enhanced senbon. Naruto didn't feel like dodging, his thoughts turned to one thing. _**'Kill.'**_

That changed as five needles impacted his stomach in a perfect circle, six inches in diameter. His eyes widened in shock as the pain spiraled right through his bloodlust and -

- he wasn't on the misty bridge, surrounded by mirrors and enemies and Sasuke's corpse, he was in a dank, underground room. Massive iron bars loomed ahead of him, rising into the murky ceiling and stretching to either side in a seemingly endless expanse of cage. Behind the cage two huge, red, slit-pupilled eyes glared back at him. Devoid of the need to _kill_ that had consumed his entire being mere moments ago, Naruto stared back listlessly.

The world inverted, and suddenly the cage was down and up was away. He fell towards those widening, baleful red eyes -

He crashed against the bars, teeth snapping together painfully as he bit through the tip of his tongue and tasted the familiar, disgusting, bitter coppery taste of blood. But he couldn't find it in himself to care as he bonelessly went with the curve of the bar, rolling inside the cage and towards fangs that had appeared out of the darkness. Just as he was about to fall into the open maw, gravity shifted again, his fall arced, and he landed in between the two red eyes. Before the eyes and towering fangs could react to the presence, five pillars, each the size of one of the massive bars, spiked through the side of the cell, forming a circle, each spinning slowly. The beast below Naruto lashed out with a feral-feeling chakra at the pillars, and the slow spinning of the pillars suddenly became a mad twirl.

The center of the spinning pillars exploded inward, and Naruto and his evil face perch were instantly drawn towards the incredible suction. For the first time since Sasuke's death a short moment ago, Naruto felt something.

Fear.

And then the spiraling, continual inward explosion of the pillars was surrounding him and the thing he was standing on, and Naruto clutched his head in agony as he felt reality warp. He was no longer a twelve year old boy; he was a small mass of brightly burning blue light.

And he was surrounded by a dark light (was that possible?), and the orange glow began to thicken slowly, until he could see nothing beyond it. He had a sense of _pressure_, but suddenly it didn't matter because -

he was back in the real world.

Opening his blood-red eyes, Naruto roared primal fury at the ninja who had taken his only friend. He felt dozens of needles fly out of his flesh, pinging against the ice as they fled his rage, wounds closing instantly as if they had never been. In a way that felt utterly natural, he dropped to all fours, a volley of senbon flying over him. His claws dug furrows through the ground as he pounced forward, the world an impossible blur as he reappeared nearly instantly in front of the mirror. He could see the ninja trying to escape, fleeing to another of his damnable glass hiding places. No longer. Pushing against the ground with all four limbs, and leaving a small crater in the ground from the force of his leap, Naruto sailed into the ninja, grabbing onto a foot with his clawed hand. Whirling around, he threw the ninja face first through one of the mirrors. He could hear the crack of the damned mask as the chakra-reinforced ice shattered, and he pounded after the still flying body of the ninja.

Before the ninja's body had even come within ten feet of the ground, Naruto had caught up. Another four-limbed leap and he shot straight up, spun around, five fingers of his clawed hand aimed straight at the back of the pale neck. He felt his claws penetrate, saw the blood spurt down into his face in slow motion. He grinned savagely as the sanguine spray coated his upper body, wet his hair, and closed his eyes in brief ecstasy as the overpowering smell of spilled life rolled over him. Then he twisted his hand, felt the neck of the ninja snap, and threw the body at the edge of the bridge as he swiveled, landing lightly on all fours. The corpse, head dangling at an impossible angle, made a sick crunching noise as it hit the railing of the bridge before slowly tilting over and falling into the water. He'd never seen the face, and he didn't care. Dead foes should be forgotten; they had failed the tests of life. The foreign idea just seemed part of him, and he accepted it without question.

Slowly standing upright, Naruto closed his eyes, chest heaving in time with his breath. The claws slowly receded, but the whisker marks on his cheeks remained a deepened black. He opened his eyes and stared at the tip of his nose with crossed red eyes. A drop of blood slowly rickled down the bridge of his nose before falling into his open mouth. He swallowed reflexively, finding the taste strangely fulfilling. He raised a blood soaked hand, staring blankly at it.

He'd killed, his hands were irrevocably stained with the blood...but he didn't feel bad about it. Strange. They'd told him in the Academy that his first kill would be a traumatic experience, and it was not uncommon for ninjas to freeze up right after, and get themselves killed. But he felt only satisfaction. The ninja had earned it by killing Sasuke. He heard something in the distance and cocked his head. Something...crackling.

"RAIKIRI!" yelled Kakashi, followed by a meaty splattering noise.

The mist began to disperse, and Naruto saw Kakashi, arm buried up to the elbow in Zabuza's chest. Strangely, there was a small pack of dogs immobilizing Zabuza's now lifeless body. Placing his left hand against Zabuza's chest, Kakashi shoved, pulling out his arm with a wet splash as a small flood of blood poured out of the ruined ribcage.

The pack of dogs dispersed with a series of poofs of smoke and Kakashi fell to his knees, clearly exhausted, dragging his hitai-ate back down over his Sharingan eye. Zabuza fell backwards, head banging against the concrete wall of the bridge with a dull crack.

Sakura and Tazuna, until then unnoticed by Naruto, rushed up from the side of the bridge.

Sakura approached him slowly, staring noticeably at the blood covering Naruto, which had begun to mat in his hair. "N-Naruto...where's Sasuke?"

He looked down at the ground clenching his teeth, hand curling into a fist. He couldn't answer. He looked up, bit his lip with fanged teeth hard enough to draw blood, and shook his head.

Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. Naruto could see tears welling up. "No...no..." she choked off a sob and ran off to where Naruto and Sasuke had fought the hunter nin, leaving Naruto with the bridge builder, who began to shift nervously from foot to foot. Naruto briefly considered trying to do something about the blood that was clearly scaring Tazuna, but something in him told him it didn't matter. Blood on him somehow seemed...if not natural, then at least not unusual.

A voice called out from the under construction section of the bridge. "I see the 'Demon of the Mist' and his little toy were defeated! I knew the bastard was nothing but hot air. Demon indeed," sneered the short man, leaning forward on his cane, tacky black shades perched on the end of his rather large nose.

Kakashi, still unable to fully stand, answered shakily. "Gato. I assume you and your thugs are here to finish the job?"

The shipping magnate's sneer widened into a calculating grin. "I'd planned on finishing off Zabuza if he was still alive, but you saved me the trouble. Now its just a single exhausted shinobi and a couple of kids standing between my army and that old fool. This went better than I could have planned!"

Naruto stared at the men, a low growl ringing out of his throat. Foul beasts, circling in a pack, waiting for the truly powerful to weaken so they could overwhelm them with sheer numbers. They reminded him of something...something he'd fought before and yet never seen in his life. Something he despised. He slowly began to walk forwards, fingernails lengthening into claws again, the world taking on a red tinge.

Kakashi looked up as Naruto strode past, raising an arm out and wincing. "Naruto...don't be an idiot. There are over a hundred of them; you don't stand a chance."

Naruto turned, looking down at his sensei with red eyes, teeth bared in a snarl. "They are nothing more than...jackals." He didn't know where the words came from, but they sounded appropriate. Kakashi froze, staring into the slit-pupilled red eyes, the darkly whiskered face.

Bringing his attention back to the smirking thugs, Naruto glared, bloodlust rolling off in him in a constant, surging wave of pressure almost thick enough to see, still advancing slowly.

The fools weren't even trained enough to know the killing intent for what it was. They began to catcall. "Oh wook, has the wittle kiddie wost his mommy?" "Come here brat, I got a present for ya!" Naruto ignored them.

Ancient instincts pulsed, and in a movement honed by decades of practice that he had never performed, Naruto lunged forward, covering the remaining fifty yards in an instant, appearing in a shower of blood as his outstretched claws sliced Gato's arm off at the shoulder.

The assembled thugs took a nervous step back while Gato fell to the ground, rolling and screaming as he clutched his shoulder, blood fountaining out in a seemingly unending spray. One of the men who had been catcalling a moment ago stuttered, "W-what are you?"

Naruto's answer was to drop to to all fours and run through the crowd, clawed hands flashing out, fangs ripping flesh. The few men that reacted quick enough to even attempt to attack him met only air; Naruto flowed with an almost liquid feral grace around flashing steel and left only crimson stains in his wake. After the first few moments the men tried to run. Tried, and failed.

After two minutes of slaughter, Naruto stopped, the last of the thugs slumping to the concrete floor of the bridge. He uncrossed his raised arms and let them fall to his sides, head tilted up to the sky, grinning with savage joy, panting for breath between bursts of laughter. The blood of the weak had been spilled by his hand.

He heard a retching noise off in the distance; it sounded like Sakura. Sakura...throwing up at something _he'd_ done?

His eyes snapped back to blue, the claws and fangs retracted, and his whiskers resumed their normal fine-line appearance. He blinked, confused for a moment, before staring at the carnage surrounding him. The blood splattered all over him in a thick coat, crusting his fingernails. He swallowed, confused for a moment, before his mouth opened and his face fell into an expression of numb shock.

"What...what...?" he asked the fallen, hand reflexively clutching his stomach. It was too much; his eyes rolled up into his head and he passed out, slumping forward and landing on what was left of one the thugs. The upper half of the man's left leg was the single largest chunk of flesh - besides Naruto - in the entire blood soaked mass of corpses.

* * *

Inside the sewer, the blue light flared, ripping a massive hole the orange. Naruto looked out through the hole, a brief smile of triumph transforming his face. (Did he have a face? He appeared to be only a blue glowing mass. Somehow he knew he did.) He could see clearly. He despised what he saw; himself, an animal. But...that was not him. He was not _that._ His nindo would not permit Uzumaki Naruto to be _that_, and his smile was for the clear sight he had of himself. Of the example of what he could never become if he was going to be Hokage. 

The orange glow began to bubble, hiss, and close with infinitesimal slowness, covering Naruto's window to the real world. He balled nonexistent fists, and stretched out to grab the edges of the orange obstruction, to tear it fully away from his view. The moment the two essences collided, the orange flowed down Naruto's arms and towards his eyes. He froze as the orange energy reached his eyes, foreign sensations rushing over him, coming in a continual stream from the orange glow, down his arms, and into his brain. The moment stretched into eternity, and Naruto, enthralled, failed to slow the orange glow, slowly closing the hole in the bubble surrounding Naruto, one iota at a time.

Something about the slow progress of the orange glow seemed to be filled with a grim satisfaction.

It seemed...final.

* * *

Author's Notes: 

The next chapter is longer; this is more of a prologue that begins to show why this is different from canon. Don't worry, this isn't a retelling. The very beginning of Naruto going Kyuubi on Haku is the only scene in the entirety of Naruto that is directly taken from the actual Naruto.

Chapter One Edited: 11-9-07, to correct spelling, flow issues, and to edit the clarity of the Kyuubi cell scene. The number of senbon was also changed from thirteen (which would be impossible to throw in one volley) to five, which is more likely and is also the same number as the Tenma Fuiin. The five "chakra enhanced senbon" formed an impromptu seal that began to mess with the actual seal.


	2. Overlay

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

Author's Notes: Less gore in this one. I don't think I'm ever going to turn another 100-odd thugs into a graphic bloody mess again.

_Battle not with monsters_

_lest ye become a monster_

_and if you gaze into the abyss_

_the abyss gazes into you._

-Friedrich Nietzsche

**Overlay**

**Chapter Two**

Inside the sewer, Naruto had just reached out and grabbed the orange, glowing chakra that had begun to surround him. The moment he touched it his world exploded, and images and sounds rushed through his mind.

_...growling at the other five tailed fox, he charged, defending _his_ domain..._

_...he howled endless rage to the heavens, five tails lashing as he stood over the corpse..._

_...he looked into the water, twisting impossibly to stare at his new appendage. A second tail. He would have pondered, but he was merely cunning and devious, and not truly intelligent..._

_...staring at the prize, the reward for defeating the dozen other kitsune, he slowly approached the vixen. She sniffed him briefly before turning and waltzing away, saying she "Had no time to play with children." Weakened from the hours of fighting, he could only growl feebly, one eye swollen shut..._

In the real world, Kakashi slowly dragged himself in Naruto's direction, battling exhaustion with every step. He'd overused the Sharingan again, but first he had to check on Naruto...on the seal.

Trudging through the bloody porridge that was all that remained of Gato and his thugs, Kakashi mostly ignored the slaughter. He'd seen worse in the Second Great War, some of it done by children younger than Naruto. He'd _been_ one of those children, truth be told.

Slowly kneeling before the unconscious boy, afraid that sudden movements would only end in his collapse, Kakashi rolled up Naruto's shirt. He'd never exactly been the seal fanatic his sensei, Minato, or his sensei, Jiraiya, had been, but one couldn't remain in their presence for more than a week without picking up the basics. Minato and Jiraiya were - had been - like that. That basic knowledge, and the briefing Hokage-sama had given him on Naruto, including all known details of the Shiki Fujin containing the Kyuubi, _should_ be enough information to tell if he needed to...put his student down.

Giving the seal a careful study, Kakashi wasted a moment regretting his current lack of chakra that prevented him from examining the seal with the Sharingan. He knew that the seal would fade into invisibility after a few minutes, and after that it would be...difficult to get Naruto to let him study it. The seal appeared normal, for the most part. However, in a seal that contained Kyuubi no Youko, one of the most powerful beings the shinobi world had ever encountered, "for the most part" simply didn't cut it.

And Kakashi was very certain that the five sluggishly bleeding senbon needle-sized three inch-deep holes in Naruto's stomach were not part of the original design. They could _not_ be good for the seal, and would have to be dealt with. Strange though...the wounds should have healed by now, especially if Naruto's insane recovery from his self-inflicted hand wound was anything to go by. Kakashi had thought Naruto would die of blood loss, never mind the Demon Brothers' poison, but the hole had closed to a scratch in less than a minute.

Putting the last of his energy into the effort, Kakashi laid a gloved hand on Naruto's stomach, calling on chakra control that had been hard-earned through twenty years of warfare. His hand was enveloped in a light, cleansing green glow, and the puncture wounds slowly began to close. Ignoring the building pain in his head signaling that he was overextending himself even further, Kakashi kept pouring healing chakra into Naruto until pink, unbroken skin covered Naruto's stomach. He would have to ask about the seal, and the fight, and just what in the hell happened...later. Right now, closing his eyes and finding a relatively dry patch of ground to collapse onto took precedence.

Kakashi didn't manage to find blood-free ground before unconsciousness claimed him. Unknown to him, his intention of restoring the seal by healing the senbon wounds had...interesting results.

* * *

Inside the sewer of Naruto's mind, Naruto, composed entirely of blue chakra, convulsively jerked back from the orange chakra, halting the flow of information that had overwhelmed his senses when a strange green light began to flow over the surface of the orange chakra. The orange chakra, which had formed a half-sphere under Naruto, briefly halted in its slow stretch to form a complete sphere around the boy as the green light began to dance over it. Naruto didn't know why he couldn't move his legs, couldn't get away from the orange chakra that was clearly trying to overwhelm him. 

He just couldn't.

Then the green light, now tinged an almost yellow color from its contact with the orange chakra, arced from the surface of the orange chakra to his stomach, bring with it another wave of sight and sound that Naruto couldn't halt. He clutched his head, mouth open in a silent scream.

_...leapt with all fours, snagging a low-hanging tree branch with his three tails and changing direction midair..._

_...slowly creeping up on a small pack of two-tailed foxes, he prepared to leap down from the tree and kill until none were left in his domain..._

_...for the first (and hopefully, last) time he kneeled before someone. "Inari-sama," he said deferently, knowing that even he was no match for the deity..._

_...curling into a ball next to her, he stretched his neck out and carefully licked the scruff of her neck. She snorted in her sleep, and he relaxed..._

Suddenly the images stopped, and Naruto blacked out, lapsing into normal unconsciousness. His soul-image remained motionless, half-trapped inside the semi-sphere of orange chakra.

* * *

Kakashi looked up at the gates of Konoha, smiling inwardly. He'd never been so glad to get back to the village walls, not even after Obito's death. The Great Hope Bridge had been completed, although Tazuna had tried to avoid Naruto as much as possible after the...incident. Sakura had too, preferring to remain as close to a still recovering Sasuke as she could, as if sheltering from a chill winter wind by huddling up to a fire. Sasuke had spent most of the return trip gritting his teeth and insisting he was fine. But whenever they stopped for the night, Sasuke would always stare at Naruto over the flames of a campfire, not even bothering to push Sakura away. Kakashi expected questions from the last Uchiha about the bridge, but he was ready. 

Naruto, on the other hand...well, Naruto was just plain unnerving. In the very brief time Kakashi had spent with Naruto, Kakashi had seen him clamor for anyone's attention, good or bad, boast loudly and constantly about becoming Hokage, and get into a fight with Sasuke or ask Sakura out at least once every twenty minutes. Now, he spent almost every moment staring off into the distance, eyes unfocused. No, that wasn't quite right. Focused, but on something only he could see.

Waving at Kotetsu, who must have drawn the short straw and been stuck with gate duty today, Kakashi led his team into Konoha. Turning, he launched into a small announcement he'd been planning since they left Wave.

"Alright, Team Seven. Congratulations on successfully completing your first A-Rank mission. You all handled yourselves well, despite continually escalating difficulties. Now..." he paused for a moment, poking Naruto in the hitai-ate and briefly gaining the boy's attention. "Naruto, you're on leave for the next four weeks. Ninja policy after your first kill. Kick back, relax, talk to a friend, get wasted, whatever. Forget the age restrictions, you're a ninja now. Talking to a friend is probably the best idea though. Dismissed." Naruto blinked for a moment before shambling off in the direction of his apartment.

Kakashi had had to make that part brief, so Naruto wouldn't lapse back into his daze for the next hour. Like he'd done when Kakashi tried to talk to him about the..incident...before they got to Konoha. Interrogating him while he was in that state was beyond hopeless; all he'd gotten out of Naruto was something about being stabbed in the stomach and his vision going red. Hopefully the boy would snap out of his daze by the time the four weeks were over.

Turning to Sakura, he continued. "Sakura, you're on leave for the next two weeks. Another part of policy after seeing...fighting on that scale. Dismissed." Kakashi hesitated to call Naruto's rampage "fighting," as that implied something had fought back, but the last thing he needed was to prejudice her against Naruto any more than she already was.

Sakura wilted for a moment, before questioning, "What about Sasuke-kun?"

Kakashi hesitated for a moment. "That particular policy was created after the Uchiha incident. He was the first to get the two weeks off. Now, I believe I dismissed you?" He hated to be short with Sakura, but he really needed to speak with Sasuke alone, and he wasn't above using psychological leave to be able to. He'd seen the look in the boy's eyes when Kakashi had told him that Naruto had killed the hunter nin and over a hundred armed thugs with relative ease. Envy. If he didn't deal with that...but he couldn't mention the Kyuubi...

"Oh," Sakura said in a small voice. "I'll be at the Yamanaka flower shop if you need me, Sasuke-kun," she finished, voice still strangely subdued. Kakashi frowned for a moment. Weren't she and that girl, Ino, rivals or something? She didn't seem like the type to get over anything by fighting about it. Not that she seemed like the type to get over anything period, but still...interesting choice.

"Hn," Sasuke responded, not even looking at his teammate, attention focused solely on Kakashi.

Kakashi waited until Sakura was out of earshot before addressing Sasuke. "We need to talk."

"Hn," Sasuke repeated. The intonation showed interest though.

"Privately. Training Ground Seven in ten minutes," Kakashi said before disappearing in a swirl of leaves. Overly dramatic, yes, but he needed some time to organize his thoughts. This was going to be difficult...

* * *

Calmly walking into Training Ground Seven ten minutes later, bright orange book noticeably absent, Kakashi silently prayed no one would comment on him showing up on time. His reputation would be ruined; not even the somewhat dim-witted nin-dog he'd set to watch over Naruto's apartment would let him hear the end of it if this got out. Sasuke, as expected, was leaning against one of the wooden stumps Kakashi had tied Naruto to only a few weeks ago, looking impatient. 

Livid more accurately. In a rare display of emotion, Sasuke's foot was tapping an erratic beat against the hard-packed dirt, his arms were crossed against his chest, and he'd balled his hands into fists underneath his armpits. The ever-present scowl appeared a notch more irritated, but that could have been Kakashi's imagination.

"Yo," he said casually. Sasuke didn't respond beyond staring at him. "I want to talk to you about...what happened that day in Wave. Afte that hunter nin activated his Bloodline Limit and summoned those ice mirrors...what do you remember?" Best to start off with what Sasuke perceived as having happened. Then he could correct and explain if he had to. He _would_ have to, but he could always think positively.

Sasuke's left hand trembled almost imperceptibly. "He was playing with me. He must have thrown hundreds of senbon, but never hit anything that would disable or kill. The mirrors let him move almost instantaneously between them, and he described watching my, and later Naruto's, movements as looking like we were standing still. When Naruto showed up, completely abandoning the element of surprise like an idiot, he charged inside the mirrors trying to help me. We were just as helpless together as I was alone." Sasuke paused for a moment, shifting uncomfortably and clenching his jaw. "I _despise_ being helpless," he said through gritted teeth.

Kakashi remained motionless, listening attentively. An aversion to helplessness was to be expected, especially considering how Sasuke had been unable to do anything to prevent his clan's extermination.

"Naruto tried to run out with a half dozen waves of shadow clones, and he never came close. But, the longer we fought, the more and more I could see what the hunter nin was doing. The more I could _see_. At first I thought he was slowing down, but by the time Naruto passed out...I knew what had happened." Sasuke smirked triumphantly. "I had activated the Sharingan. I could _see_."

Kakashi let out a low whistle. So, the stress of battle had finally activated Sasuke's Sharingan potential. Just like Obito.

"I'll have to start teaching you about how to use it...continue," Kakashi said, gesturing with his hand for Sasuke to resume.

"The ninja was apparently afraid of the Sharingan...and instead of attacking me, he attacked Naruto, who was out cold. I guess it was chakra exhaustion, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I knew the moment the ninja came out of the mirror what was happening. I just...reacted. I got in front of Naruto, and got a collar of spikes for it. Before my body went numb I managed to kick the ninja back into a mirror, and stunned him for a minute. Then Naruto woke up, saw me...and I passed out."

Kakashi noticed the hesitation on just what had happened when Naruto woke up, but ignored it. He'd probably said something that might have indicated respect for the blond. Which reminded him...

"You jumped in front of a volley of senbon aimed at Naruto, basically sacrificing yourself to save his life?" Kakashi asked, one visible eybrow arched.

Sasuke bristled, as if the insinuation that he might care about someone was a grave insult. "I just reacted. My body moved on its own," he said, looking off to the side and refusing to meet Kakashi's gaze.

Kakashi smiled, the only indication his one eye closing in a distinctive upwards fashion. Sasuke just might be further from that self-centered revenge hell than he'd thought if the boy was willing to sacrifice himself for his team.

"Kakashi...how did Naruto kill that ninja? We didn't stand a chance..._I_ didn't stand a chance...and then...?" Sasuke asked, grimacing. "How did he get that strong? Where did he get that...power?"

Kakashi closed his eye and sighed. Or Sasuke could be just as bad off as he'd thought. The naked lust when Sasuke said the word "power" told him all he needed to know.

"I know what happened...and I can't fully explain it to you. It's Naruto's secret, but...right now, I doubt Naruto's in any condition to explain."

Sasuke scowled at him. "Naruto has some...secret? Something he's keeping from us?"

Kakashi stared into Sasuke's eyes until the younger boy averted his gaze. "We all have secrets. I do; I have a Sharingan. I'm not related to the Uchiha family in any way, and I don't want to talk about how I got it. You'll have to be satisfied with that for now. You _certainly_ have secrets. I could figure them out if I tried; I'm a jounin. But I won't, because everyone deserves a certain amount of privacy. Naruto too."

Sasuke's scowl deepened, but he slowly nodded.

"Now...I can tell you're somewhat envious of Naruto finding the power to kill that ninja, and then the thugs."

No response, but a subtle tensing of Sasuke's muscles indicated he'd struck a nerve.

Kakashi exhaled briefly, letting the tension out of his body. He stared up at the forest canopy before saying, "Tell me, Sasuke, just what do you know about the Blood Rage?"

Sasuke closed his eyes in concentration for a moment, calling up an old memory. Opening his eyes, he looked at Kakashi, puzzled. "Isn't that when someone becomes a berserker on the battlefield, and has no control of their actions?"

"More or less. It's actually a mental illness, usually tied to extreme psychological trauma from extended combat. It became somewhat common during the Great Shinobi Wars."

Clearing his throat, Kakashi carefully considered how to phrase his response. "The Blood Rage isn't _quite_ what's happened to Naruto, but it's the closest thing I can relate it too. Had you been awake, you would have seen him. He had no control over his actions. He was like an animal. Naruto is not to be envied; he is to be pitied. He was strong, oh yes. I had a tough time following his movements without the Sharingan. He wasn't thinking though. Against any truly trained opponent, he would have been beaten easily. Brains beats brawn and all that." Kakashi raised one finger in warning. "One final thing. Despite his strength, despite the fact that Naruto effortlessly slaughtered over a hundred mercenaries, he had no control of it. I doubt he remembers any of it. When the fight was over, he looked down at the corpses, started crying, and passed out. You saw him on the trip back; he wasn't himself. I really have no idea what's going on in his head, but if he doesn't start to get better I'm going to have to put him on a more...permanent psychological leave."

Kakashi really should have done that the moment he got into Konoha. For anyone else, he would have...but Naruto was the Kyuubi vessel. Any sign of weakness would be seized on by the village and the Council. A declaration that he was mentally unfit would be nothing short of a death sentence.

Sasuke uncrossed his arms and stood up from the training post. Scowling slightly, he said, "Idiot better not go insane then. I don't want to have to find another teammate."

Kakashi took a deep, calming breath. Hopefully that was just Sasuke-speak for "I'm worried about Naruto." Hopefully.

* * *

Outside of Naruto's apartment, the nin-dog Bull kept watch. A large bulldog like himself was stubborn and tough; he was the least likely of Kakashi's pack to be defeated or intimidated away from his post. His tracking skills weren't the best and he knew it, but Bull didn't have to track, he just had to keep watch over one inept genin. 

Unfortunately, even a tenacious bulldog can be distracted. And honestly, who wouldn't be distracted when the Haimaru Sanshimai, the three Haimaru triplets, bounded by overhead, all three giving off a distinctive, arousing odor. All three sisters were in heat, and only their ninja training gave them the ability to ignore that biological imperative. Bull was reminded of just _how_ _long_ it had been since he'd been summoned, since he'd...well.

Such an opportunity was too good to pass up, and he began quietly trailing the three and their trainer, Inuzuka Hana. They never noticed him. He _was_ a ninja dog after all.

The one inept genin would be fine. How much trouble could a brat get into in the middle of a ninja village? Kakashi had seemed preoccupied with something else when giving his orders; it probably wasn't that big a deal.

* * *

In a surprisingly well-kept apartment, considering his social status, Naruto stared up at his white ceiling, the thick sheets of the bed bunching uncomfortably against his neck and back. Normally he would have shifted, adjusted the sheets, and (if he was ambitious) thought of a way to guilt trip Iruka-sensei into ironing the sheets, his clothes, and cleaning his room. Again. That was, after all, the only reason his room wasn't a grimy rat-infested hole in the wall. Naruto's concept of cleanliness (when he would be doing the cleaning) was "My feet don't stick to the stains on the floor _that_ much." 

Prior to his graduation, to his earning Iruka-sensei's acknowledgment, his apartment had been grimy, uncleaned, his clothes in need of replacement, and the only thing that had been well maintained had been Naruto's small collection of his beloved plants. Iruka-sensei coming into Naruto's home one day, taking one look at the place, and forcing Naruto to help him clean the place up had been one of the happiest memories of Naruto's life. Somebody had cared about him.

But today was clearly _not_ normal. The utter stillness with which Naruto lay would prove that to anyone who knew the fidgety boy. The fact that his eyes were two different colors, red on the outside edges of the iris, and blue on the inside was further evidence.

The chakra slowly circling him, leaving faint scorch marks in the floor would have drawn even more attention. Mostly blue, red flecks kept appearing randomly throughout, and sparks flew the moment they winked into existence before dying out as the chakra resumed its more normal-seeming blue color.

To Naruto, the very strangeness of the day enthralled him. He was in his room, staring up at the ceiling, and yet overlaying his view of the ceiling was a strange double-vision of looking down at a clear lake. Naruto decided that looking up at a ceiling and looking down at a lake at the same time was rather confusing, and if he'd been the introspective type, he might have wondered why he was hallucinating.

But he was Uzumaki Naruto, and such minor considerations as possible insanity were nothing compared to one all-encompassing truth.

The lake image overlaying the ceiling, like it was being shot out of one of Iruka-sensei's stupid overhead projectors, was giving him a headache. He scrunched up his eyes, trying to focus on one of the images. The lake leapt into clear focus first, and Naruto slowly relaxed as his headache faded, as he leaned over the surface of the water, staring at his reflection.

* * *

He looked into the water, twisting impossibly to stare at his new appendage. The rest of his body, orange fur, long muzzle, orange slit-pupilled eyes, had remained the same, but one thing had changed. He had a second tail. He would have pondered, but he was merely cunning and devious, and not yet truly intelligent. With the short attention span that had characterized much of the fox's life, he was quickly distracted by a good sized fish swishing through the nearly still water a mere paw's length away from his reflection. An idea flashed into being, normally a rare occurrence for the small fox. He still lacked the true sentience that would lead him to questioning if it was related to the new tail. 

Concentrating with all of his might, the fox slowly lowered the tip of his right tail into the water. The fish immediately swished away, frightened by the sudden addition to its watery home. He remained motionless; he had learned the lesson of patience within the first month of his life. After what seemed like an eternity of waiting - he could remain still, but he found it boring - the fish slowly returned and it began to circle the orange tip of the fox's tail.

Then the fish bit the tail. As per the plan (and reflexively, because that _stung!_) he yanked his tail up out of the water, bringing the fish up with it. The fish promptly released the tail, attempting to fall back into the lake, but he lashed out with his other tail, thwapping the fish onto the ground. He slapped a paw down on the tail of the fish, preventing it from flopping back into the water.

After a moment the fish began to slow in its convulsions, and he leaned over, biting into the underbelly of the fish. Blood trickled onto his nose as he dug in, contrasting with his orange fur.

Distracting as the freshly caught meal was, he was not oblivious to the world. He halted, raised his head and swiveled his ears when he heard something approaching from behind. The thing continued to approach, and he jumped to the other side of the fish, landing facing away from the lake and toward the sound.

Well. He didn't know what he'd expected, but it certainly hadn't been a brown two-tailed fox. He hadn't seen another of his kind in...he couldn't remember, and didn't particularly care. Slowly stepping over the fish, he approached the other fox. They froze, a body length away from each other, before they began circling, each moving to their left. They each tested the air with their noses, getting a feel for the other.

Then the orange fox stopped circling and pounced, tackling the brown fox to the ground, and they began to roll in an impossible-to-follow blur of swinging tails and nipping teeth. They broke apart a moment later, growling softly at each other. Then the orange fox stopped, slowly approached the brown, and reached out with a single paw. The brown fox batted the paw with one of his own, and the orange fox closed his eyes, pleased with himself.

Gesturing with his tails in the direction of the lake, he began to show his newly acquired companion how to catch fish.

* * *

Author's Notes: Referring to Kyuubi as "he" and "the orange fox" is a pain in the ass and I know it's not the easiest thing in the world to follow. He'll get a name next chapter. (I can't exactly have him refer to himself as Kyuubi...for various plot reasons, _and_ the fact that Kyuubi means nine tails, and, he kind of doesn't have nine tails.) 

Also, I hate to beg for reviews, but they really make my day. I get a nice email, and a reply link, and I get all warm and fuzzy inside. Now, to put me in a good mood, send me a review, and give me that damn warm fuzzy feeling! It's addictive.

Edited 11-09-07: The entire Blood Rage thing was removed. It added nothing to the plot, I never planned on utilizing it, and I have no idea why it was in there. Sorry. Some of the brief little flashbacks were also removed or edited to better go along with the direction I intend on taking Overlay.


	3. Konoha

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto

Author's Notes: Thanks to **Dargon Sheinto** for pointing out that I was going to have to deal with Sakura's reaction whether I wanted to or not. Surprisingly, I found myself enjoying the scene. Thanks!

_"Talking" _- Mental link talking.

"Talking" - Normal talking

_'Talking'_ - Thoughts (Not used in conjunction with Mental link, as that would just be annoying.)

_"The only reason people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory." _- Anonymous

**Overlay**

**Chapter Three**

Sasuke panted, red eyes open wide, hands held up wearily, legs bent in a weak taijutsu stance. Cuts and bruises adorned his body, and he was beginning to feel light-headed from keeping the Sharingan active for so long. The grass beneath him was littered with a not insignificant amount of blood, and an obscene amount of kunai and shuriken had lodged themselves in various trees behind him, small traces of his blood darkening their edges.

Kakashi threw another kunai at him, and with the Sharingan Sasuke could _see_ where it would go, how long it would take to get there, every single miniscule imperfection in the edge of the blade. It would nick his cheek, just barely. The Sharingan showed him a myriad of possible reactions, dozens of ways to dodge and set himself up for a counterattack, just when to lunge out with his hand to catch the handle and fling it back at Kakashi, the mere twist of his neck that would have the kunai go sailing past his head.

The Sharingan showed him one special way, one way that was just better. The perfect reaction to the kunai, still incoming in almost slow motion. The urge to _move_, and _this way_, began to force itself through his brain, but Sasuke pushed it back. As per Kakashi's orders, he remained immobile, letting the kunai nick his cheek, bringing another stinging cut to his body and another few drops of blood to the grass.

"Good. That's the ninth one in a row you haven't dodged," Kakashi called, readying another brace of sharp, pointy objects to hurl at his student.

On the surface, it seemed an exercise in stupidity, and Sasuke had told Kakashi as much when he'd announced the lesson. But, a brief explanation had quelled most of Sasuke's frustration. The entire point of the exercise was to increase _his_ control over the Sharingan, and lesson _its_ control over _him._ It was the difference between fighting based purely on reactions, and fighting with a plan, and being in control every moment of the fight, or so Kakashi had said. The Sharingan placed the most influence over reacting to attacks, and if he could suppress those urges, he would be able to _pick_ which one of the thousand possible reactions he wanted, instead of having the Sharingan pick for him.

That had been an hour ago. An hour of stinging nicks and the occasional rock lobbed at him, standing there immobile and letting everything hit him. His patience had worn thin.

Finally giving in to the urge to _move_, Sasuke reacted, going with the flow of the Sharingan. It was fluid movement, it was precise, it was _perfect._ His hands shot out, catching the two shuriken. Taking a step forward, he flicked them back at another two shuriken, deflecting them into the path of a kunai, sending them all clattering to the ground. He caught the final kunai, reversed his grip, and brought his arm back to throw it at Kakashi as hard as he could.

Kakashi suddenly _wasn't there._ Even the Sharingan lost track of his movements and the man become nothing more than a blur. He couldn't react; he was too slow. Before he could move, he found himself bent forward, his kunai pressed to the back of his own skull. Just like Naruto at the beginning of the bell test.

"Now now, I didn't say you could dodge, did I?" asked Kakashi rhetorically, before loosening his death grip on Sasuke's arms, taking the kunai as he did so.

Sasuke answered anyway, fairly growling at his sensei. "Enough is enough. I've been standing here like an idiot for over an hour , letting every one of those damned things hit me. Just then, when I was just _reacting_, everything was perfect. Every move, every reaction, it was flawless and perfect, and I could feel it. _Why shouldn't I?_ Why bother learning how to override the Sharingan, if every time I follow it I move perfectly?"

A strange look passed over the only visible portion of Kakashi's face, his right eye. "Perhaps a practical demonstration is in order," he muttered. Sasuke turned, scowling, to see just what Kakashi would cook up. His eyes widened slightly as he saw Kakashi form a now familiar cross-shaped seal. A quick phrase on Kakashi's part, and suddenly the clearing was filled with fifty-one Kakashi's, counting the original.

Jerking his head at one of the clones, the Kakashi that Sasuke assumed was the original gestured for it to stand next to Sasuke. Something entirely unexpected followed: the clone henge'd into Naruto and took a basic defensive stance well beneath Kakashi's level. A questioning look at his sensei earned no response as the now-fifty Kakashi's formed a rough circle around the two.

"What the hell are you doing?" Sasuke demanded, unable to hold back his curiosity any longer.

"Assume that you and 'Naruto' are surrounded by enemy ninjas. You've adopted a rather standard back to back defensive posture, to limit the number of directions you can be attacked from. Just go with the flow of the Sharingan; if it's so perfect you should be fine. We'll only be throwing two volleys. Don't worry, 'Naruto' won't let anything get past him to hit you in the back," Kakashi answered blandly.

Without waiting for Sasuke's reaction, the small army of Kakashi's drew kunai and shuriken and steel began to fly. Sasuke almost smirked; the weapons were thrown rather weakly and were _far_ beneath his level; he could probably have dodged them all without the Sharingan. Slipping into the near-trance-like state of bliss that was the Sharingan flow, he began to move.

He effortlessly dodged every last one of the projectiles, smirk widening as he felt some of the come so close that the wind of their passing ruffled his shirt. Kakashi didn't know what he was talking about, obviously. He wasn't an Uchiha, he'd merely obtained the Sharingan somehow, how could he be expected to master it, he was just -

His train of thought was cut off as a kunai lodged itself deeply into the back of his leg, the sudden shock of pain jarring him so much that his eyes faded out of the Sharingan. His leg buckled, and he fell to the ground, barely catching himself with outstretched arms.

Gritting his teeth and hissing, he closed one eye against the pain, using the other to glare at his teacher. "You said 'Naruto' wouldn't let anything get past him," he accused, trying to maintain some semblance of dignity through the pain.

Kakashi nodded. "He didn't. You, on the other hand, let quite a few attacks get past you."

Sasuke frowned for a moment, trying to concentrate on just what in the hell Kakashi was getting at. The throbbing ache in his calf and thoughts of massive blood loss were hard to ignore.

The silver-haired jounin sighed impatiently before pointing behind Sasuke. Twisting his head to look over his shoulder, Sasuke's scowl deepened as he saw that "Naruto" was gone. Four kunai were in the dirt, in roughly the same position "Naruto" had been in. They were pointing away from where the real Kakashi was, in the direction "Naruto" had been facing. Comprehension began to dawn on Sasuke's face.

"Those kunai..." he whispered aloud.

"Are the ones I threw at you, that you dodged, that hit your teammate in the back. Congratulations, your trust in the perfection of the Sharingan has just gotten the both of you killed," Kakashi said, voice unusually cold.

The pain in his leg had begun to diminish, although Sasuke wasn't sure if that was because it really wasn't that bad or because it was going numb. He could only think of one thing.

"How...how did you know...?" he asked.

Kakashi paused for a moment, and dispersed the remainder of his clones before walking up to Sasuke. Squatting down on his heels and looking at Sasuke at eye level, he answered, "I acquired the Sharingan as a final gift from my dying teammate, Uchiha Obito, to replace an eye I'd lost in the same mission that caused his death. Three days later, I went on a mission with my one remaining teammate, Rin. What you just experienced in practice was reality for me. My inexperience with the Sharingan got her killed. The only reason I didn't die myself was because my sensei showed up a short time later, and Iwa had a flee on sight order attached to his name."

Sasuke turned his eyes to the ground, unable to keep staring into the accusing gaze of his sensei.

Kakashi wasn't done. "_That_ is why I place so much importance on teamwork. Had I actually worked with my team, instead of assumed they were beneath me, neither of them would have died." Kakashi paused for a moment before continuing. "You remind me of myself when I was your age, Sasuke, and that isn't a compliment. I don't want you to go through what I did, and I'll carve my name onto that monument - " he jerked a thumb at the black marble slab, engraved with the names of shinobi killed in action, " - and dig my own grave to keep it from happening."

A pair of hands reached out and grabbed Sasuke by the armpits and hoisted him to his feet. Normally he would glare at Kakashi for daring to touch him, but Sasuke instead winced and hissed through his teeth again as the kunai in his leg was jarred, bringing another dull throb of pain.

Back to his normal, apparently carefree self, Kakashi closed his eye to indicate he was smiling and remarked, "Of course, that doesn't matter if you cripple yourself going through training. I'm sure the medic nin trainees will love to have a puncture wound to practice on."

Sasuke merely snorted and allowed the man to assist him in the direction of the hospital. If Kakashi was serious about placing him in the hands of half-trained medics, Sasuke would make sure the ANBU never found the man's body.

* * *

The Yamanaka flower shop seemed to be a typical store of its kind at first glance. The roof was made of glass, allowing sunlight to stream down upon the rows of potted flowers and ferns and shrubs, each tastefully arranged upon a series of wooden, outdoorsy-feeling tables. Perennials and annuals were clearly marked, small tags with pictures of the plant, its name, and price were inserted into the dirt of each pot, clearly visible, and the entire place smelled of a soothing mixture of flowers and freshly turned soil. The average civilian would relax as the soothing scents and sights of the "natural" world were displayed before them. 

A second glance, even a third and fourth, wouldn't change the casual, untrained observer's opinion of the store. One trained in the arts of the shinobi, however, would instantly recognize the scent of dozens of different plants that secreted compounds used in poisons, ultra-strength painkillers, soldier pills, and a variety of other ninja goods. The average ninja would tense, aware that one of the plants was giving off a rather large amount of a chemical relaxant, designed to be used (in higher concentrations) by ANBU on missions in which they required guards to stand still and stare off at nothing, sure that everything in the world was fine.

Ino, when she'd first heard of that property of her family's plants, had wondered if it somehow influenced customer's willingness to pay for flower arrangements. She'd later decided that it probably did, and it would probably be regarded by some as unethical, but the Yamanakas were a ninja clan that specialized in influencing the mind. Subtle persuasion like that should be expected.

Her father had joked that living around the smells since a young age would help her build up a resistance to the substances if they were ever used on her. Or cause permanent brain damage, he wasn't sure. She was fairly certain it had caused her father brain damage when _he'd_ grown up in the shop; it was the only explanation for the way the man acted.

Still, there might have been something to the resistance idea. Or maybe she was just getting used to it; being forced to spend at least four hours a day sitting behind a counter in the store could do that, she guessed. Sometimes she wondered why her parents made her work the counter; it wasn't like the store got more than two customers a day. Mostly setting up the "flower shop" was just a convenient excuse for the city commission to give them zoning rights to build a greenhouse in the middle of a city. Real purchases were conducted far in advance, as men or women spoke with her father, requesting certain special plants that were not out in the open display.

Ninjas had no shady, well-concealed, secretive poison stores. Ninjas had flower shops, and as long as the owner was growing the right flowers, that was all they needed.

The bell strung to the door began to ring, announcing that one of her two expected customers of the day had arrived. Straightening up from her slouch on the counter, Ino idly wondered whether it would be Mrs. Feeny or Mr. Toriyama, the only regulars of the shop.

She blinked slightly with surprise when she caught sight of the long pink hair. Sakura?

"Ino-pig," greeted Sakura, managing a weak glare, although her tone lacked the normal fury whenever she spoke to Ino.

"Forehead girl! What brings you here? I'm pretty sure I can find you something to reduce that swelling," Ino shot back, smirking, as she pointed at Sakura's forehead.

Strangely, the glare on Sakura's face remained weak, and there was no outpouring of righteous anger, although the scowl on Sakura's face deepened. Something was up. Sakura remained silent for a long moment, and Ino began to shift uncomfortably. Before she could try and break the nervous moment, Sakura spoke up.

"Ino...I want to talk," Sakura said in a small voice. Ino snapped to attention, something was_ definitely_ up. That was the first time Sakura had called her "Ino" without any following insult ever since she'd given back the ribbon. Ever since their friendship had dissolved and their lives had shifted to a never-ending rivalry.

"Okay," she found herself answering, just like it was old times. Sakura had a problem, and Ino would help her. She'd begun to miss those times, even if she'd never admit it.

Sakura began to tell her about the entire mission she'd been on, starting with how the drunkard of a bridge builder had lied about the difficulty and they'd been attacked by two chunin-level missing-nin from Kirigakure no Sato, the Village Hidden in the Mist. Ino didn't really see how that would have distressed Sakura enough for her to ignore their self-created enmity, but she was willing to keep listening.

Then she heard about how an A-Rank missing nin showed up and nearly killed all of them. Kakashi incapacitated for days. The tree-climbing exercise, which Sakura briefly paused to brag about. She'd apparently mastered it on the first try, and it had taken "Sasuke and Naruto" the entire day and most of the night to get it down. Ino barely held in her surprise; _Naruto_ had mastered tree climbing in a day? She would have to ask about that later.

Sakura slowed her speech, and her words began to falter. Ino, long experienced in the art of watching people, knew that Sakura was getting to the climax of the story.

What a climax it was. Zabuza reappearing with an apprentice, a ninja by the name of "Haku" that he'd bragged was just as strong as he was. The death of Zabuza, how Sakura had been almost unable to keep herself from throwing up at the sight of Kakashi, spattered in blood, arm sticking clean through the man's chest. Ino almost berated Sakura for that; they were _ninja_. She was going to have to get used to it - Ino had been told the horrors of the ninja world in a completely matter of fact way throughout her entire life. She was from a clan after all, and her family had been ninja since the founding of Konoha. Sakura's civilian upbringing was becoming more obvious the longer her time as a ninja went on.

When the pink-haired girl began to physically shudder at the description of Naruto, covered in blood, idly staring at Zabuza's corpse, Ino was forced to get out from behind the counter to awkwardly embrace Sakura, trying to calm her down. After a minute of composing herself, Sakura continued.

Ino herself nearly fainted at the mention of Sakura seeing Sasuke's lifeless body, and she rapped Sakura on the head for scaring her that much when the pink haired girl said that the boy wasn't actually dead. Sasuke dying would probably break Sakura.

Sakura began to shake uncontrollably when she mentioned Naruto's merciless slaughter of over a hundred armed thugs as if they were nothing more than rag dolls, and even Ino found merely the thought of it disturbing. She understood Sakura's reaction; seasoned shinobi would be hard-pressed to not empty their stomachs at the sight of such a large number of people turned into bloody porridge.

However, that didn't mean she sympathized with Sakura's reaction to Naruto himself after the fight was over.

Sakura was babbling by now. "He was an animal, a monster, he _slaughtered_ them, and he was_ laughing_, and he's a monster, it's just like everyone says, he's a monster..."

Ino cut her off with a loud slap to the cheek, the sound ringing out in the sudden silence of the flower shop. Supposedly that was what you were supposed to do with hysterical people. Thankfully the plants were still giving off that soothing drug, or Sakura would have had a complete breakdown.

"Calm. Down," she said slowly to Sakura, who began to nod, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. "I don't like the brat myself, but he didn't do anything wrong."

"What are you talking about?! He slaughtered all those mmph!" Sakura cried, as Ino clamped a hand over the girl's mouth so she could finish.

"Don't interrupt. He did nothing wrong. A bunch of thugs wanted to kill you, and he killed them. End of story," she declared. She hesitated a moment before saying, "As to the laughing...my dad's been a ninja for almost his entire life, and I've heard all of his stories. Combat does weird things to people; it doesn't make them evil. Sakura, you're going to have to get used to things like this - " she was interrupted as Sakura flung her hand away.

"GET USED TO IT!?" she screamed. "We're humans, not _monsters!_ We don't do things like that!"

Ino gave Sakura a withering glare, recognizable from their friendship as the 'you didn't just say that, did you?' look.

"You were supposed to be the smartest one in our class, forehead girl. Don't tell me you forgot that death and killing is part and parcel of being a ninja? The lessons on pressure points, vital organs, how to use a weapon to hit them?" she asked dryly. Sakura just stared at her blankly, and Ino almost sighed. If logic doesn't work, there's always the illogical. "You don't think Sasuke-kun is going to like a squeamish girl who can't bear to see him after he's been on a mission, do you?"

Most would consider it odd, to see Ino giving Sakura, her "rival" for Sasuke's attention, serious advice on how to act around the boy. But Ino was a careful study in character, and it hadn't taken her more than a month of observing (some would say, _stalking_) Sasuke to determine that he wasn't her type. He was cute, sure, but he was also demanding. She was a strong, beautiful, willful kunoichi. She didn't cater to others, others catered to _her_. If she was honest, she would admit that the fight with Sakura over Sasuke had stopped being about Sasuke a long time ago.

The fight had grown beyond that. Ino was fairly certain Sakura was still hung up on the broody boy. Ino herself, even though she'd given up on him in her own mind and moved on to other prospects, still chased after him. But only to prove to Sakura that it had been wrong to become her enemy, to prove that _she_ was better. To hurt the one who had hurt her by returning the ribbon that had symbolized their friendship.

She was going to have to confess to Sakura some day and apologize. She'd have a long battle against her pride before she'd admit it, but she knew she would have to do it eventually. Today, however, Sakura needed a rival to distract herself while she came to terms with everything, and Ino was happy to do that for the other girl. Helping Sakura just might help her salve her own conscience.

Sakura had been staring blankly at her, as if trying to wrap her brain around what Ino had said. Finally she responded, in a tone that was filled with her normal fire, a tone that made Ino smirk for reasons other than her normal sense of superiority.

"How would you know what Sasuke wants, Ino-pig!"

Things devolved into a name-calling bout from there, which Ino believed she had won, but neither of them put any venom into their words.

* * *

He shimmied along the tree branch upside down, holding on with nothing more than long nails and determination. He could have used chakra, but that would have called the attention of everyone even mildly sensitive to its use to his position. And in a compound full of ninja, that was a rather large number of people. He'd be found out quicker than a cat in a kennel. 

Finally reaching a junction of branches that would allow him to crouch, instead of hanging upside down like a spider, he quietly shifted his position. The deep foliage of the tree cast him into shadow, but he could see out into the brightly lit compound through cracks in the omnipresent leafy cover. He remained motionless for almost an hour, studying the paths of the ninja and the not inconsiderable number of highly trained attack dogs.

At first glance, the patrols appeared random, but humans are ever creatures of order and repetition. After an hour's study, he began to see how the patrols looped, despite what must have been careful planning to prevent just such from happening. An intruder who knows when the guards will be where is an intruder to be feared.

He knew where his target was: the first floor of a small outbuilding in the southeastern section of the compound, inside a low-ceilinged room with thick stone walls. As a security measure, there were no windows larger than slits in the wall on the first floor, and guards were posted at each door. Patrols roamed the compound, but did not center around the building, for which he was thankful. In fact, the patrols seemed to be almost...avoiding the room, as if afraid of its contents. He almost grinned to himself; this would be easier than he thought.

But he had to move quickly; the compound he'd doused himself in to mask his scent would wear off within the next few hours. He waited until a patrol passed beneath him and turned around the corner of the building before dropping down and silently racing to hide underneath an ornamental bridge. He stretched out his limbs, propping himself up above the water. The bridge was small and ornamental, the hiding space tiny, and he would be squatting in the miniscule stream it arched over if he did not do so. That would rub off the scent-masking compound, and then he would be in trouble.

_'...76, 77, 78, here they come, 80...'_ he thought to himself, carefully counting the passing seconds. Another patrol passed him, and he waited until they were out of earshot before dropping down slowly, his body barely disturbing the water before he shot out from underneath the bridge. This would be it; all or nothing.

Reaching the southeastern section of the compound, he dug his nails into the soft wood of the support pillars and ran up the wall as quietly as he could, finally reaching the second floor and an open window. An unforgivable security breach, and whoever had done so would likely be punished when he had finished. Twisting his body so that his head stuck into the window, he bit down as hard as he could before releasing his hold on the support pillar.

The pain was instant and excruciating, as his upper jaw began to hold his entire weight, but he was stubborn like that. His arms finally managed to find purchase on the windowsill, and he pulled himself up, barely managing to flip himself inside the room before the next patrol passed underneath. Close one.

Despite the outdoor sunshine, the window was small and the sun was on the opposite side of the building, leaving the room in relative darkness. He waited for a moment, letting his eyes adjust, before slowly stalking over to the door. From here on out it was sheer luck and guesswork; he'd had no way to spy on the inside of the building.

Using enhanced senses, he carefully smelled the air. Nothing on this floor. Placing an ear against the edge of the door, he carefully listened, just to be sure. Only silence met his ears. The second floor must be empty. After a moment, he managed to twist the doorknob and open the door, before slowly edging his way into the hall. He nudged the door shut, wincing at the audible clicking noise, before sniffing the air again to get his bearings.

The target was to the right. Following the invisible trail, he stalked on down the hall, completely focused on his mission.

It is a common male fantasy to have two women at the same time. Asking if it would be better if the women were twins only results in a hasty affirmative. Asking if _three_ women at once, all identical triplets, would be better, results in a dribble of blood flowing out of the nose and a dazed look of ecstasy at the mere thought.

Bull was no exception, and he'd evaded the best trackers in the village, snuck into a compound that was ridiculously secure just by virtue of having dozens of nin dogs waltzing about, to reach that pinnacle of male fantasies. Nothing would stop him, because he was a bulldog, tenacious and stubborn. Once he got his teeth into something, figuratively or literally, he never let go.

The thought of "into something" set his thoughts on an entirely different path, and he had to pause a moment so he didn't walk into a wall.

It took several moments to wipe up the drool by rolling over on it and having his vest absorb it. Done with removing the trace of his presence, Bull pressed on, pausing every few dozen feet to fight off the relentless wave of fantasies.

* * *

Naruto's apartment had lost its well-kept appearance. Iruka, who would normally have checked in on the boy by now, had taken an Academy class on an extended survival exercise, and wouldn't be back for at least a week, and thus hadn't been able to force order and cleanliness upon Naruto's apartment. 

The place could really have used some order and cleanliness, both in the apartment and its tenant. The wooden floor surrounding the bed was now pocked with scorch marks, the air was heavy with the smell of ozone, and the entire place looked like a fire had been set that had burned right on top of everything without burning it directly. Naruto's not inconsiderable collection of plotted plants had died from the heat, the paint on his wall had begun to crack and peel, and the food inside the refrigerator, despite its best efforts at maintaining cold, had begun to spoil.

Naruto still lay on his bed in an awkward position, completely immobile. His eyes flickered beneath his eyelids, but that and the rise and fall of his chest were the only physical signs that the blond was still among the living. Nonphysical signs, such as the chakra circling him and his bed, were far more obvious. Everything within the circle had been liberally doused with sparks at one point in the recent past, except for Naruto, at the perfect center of the agitated chakra.

Blue now clashed openly with orange, and some of the flare-ups of orange chakra lasted several seconds before being overwhelmed by the blue chakra. But it was obvious that the orange was slowly growing stronger. The orange had begun to flare into being more often, and it took the blue longer to quench it every time. Every minor conflict between the two auras resulted in a scattering of sparks, sometimes even real flames, before the oppressive, nearly dead quality of the room's air quenched the flames.

* * *

Two foxes stalked through the forest aimlessly, bored. Dusk had come, and the setting sun barely managed to shed any light through the thick lattice of branches above the two. The world was cast into shadow, but even in the dim light one could clearly see signs of frustration in the two three-tailed kitsune. They had found nothing to prank, fight, or eat in two weeks. Their only contact with each other was that the rightmost of the the brown fox's three tails and the leftmost of the orange fox's were touching at the tip. If one focused, one could see a faint reddish glow surrounding the tips of the tails. 

_"This is your fault,"_ thought the orange fox.

_"My fault!? You're the one who decided it was a good idea to stop following the river!"_ responded the brown fox.

The orange fox snapped his teeth in the direction of his brown traveling companion. _"We'd been following the river for a week! We didn't find a single village, and I'll starve before I eat another damn fish."_

The brown fox snorted. _"I thought - _I_ -_ _ was the leader? I _am_ the one who figured out how we could talk to each other without having to walk around in human form, wasting energy. Our mouths weren't exactly designed for speech you know,"_ he thought sarcastically.

_"You, the leader? You're too unoriginal to lead anything. _I'm_ the one who showed _you_ how to use chakra; you just made this _one_ technique."_

The brown fox halted for a moment, almost severing the link between the tails as the orange fox continued walking. _"Unoriginal!?"_

_"You named yourself Kasshoku. It's hard to get less original than brown_," thought the orange fox, stopping to maintain the link, one eye widened slightly in imitation of a raised eyebrow.

Kasshoku snorted again before responding, eyes closed in a futile attempt to hide his frustration. They _were_ linked mentally after all. _"At least I'm not a little drama queen, Deimos. Striking fear into the mortals by naming yourself Terror in a language they don't even speak anymore?"_

Sometimes he didn't know why he'd stuck around with Deimos. The other kitsune was endlessly frustrating at times, and had failed to gain any maturity with his third tail, as Kasshoku had done. But, he'd just never been able to resist any of the orange fox's harebrained schemes. He _was_ a kitsune, and Deimos was a fair prodigy of planning "assaults upon mankind," more commonly known as pranks. At least Deimos was entertaining, if sometimes childish.

However, despite his immaturity, Deimos had something of a scholarly streak. How the fidgety, impatient fox could be so enthralled by something as mundane as a musty old book was one of several mysteries of Kasshoku's world. This was not to say that the books were worthless; Deimos had been able to figure out just what in the nine tails chakra was and how they could use it through those books.

Old texts, however, were no match for having someone show you how to do something, as they had discovered. One of the two would learn a trick, and teach it to the other in a way that was actually understandable, unlike _some_ of those archaic instructions. It was a shame that none of the other kitsune would be willing to share their secrets with the two foxes. Most of their race, when not involved with the Temple of Inari, were rather solitary, and guarded any fragments of power they'd accrued jealously. Those _in_ the Temple of Inari would not share their secrets unless the two swore vows of service to the god.

The two respected Inari, mostly for the tales of how the old ten-tailed fox had wreaked mischief upon the human world in his younger days, before his ascension to the level of deity. Rumor had it that the god had invented pantsing and several other staples of the industry of mischief. That didn't mean the two kitsune wanted to spend the rest of their lives conducting pilgrims to and from isolated shrines in the middle of the forest, or whatever it was the Inari serving foxes did, even if they would be taught the use of chakra. Power without the freedom to use it was worthless.

It wasn't like they could vow service to Inari, learn about chakra, and then be on their merry way. They weren't humans, who could go back on their word at the drop of the hat. Violation of a kitsune's sworn oath meant a slow and agonizing death as their soul fragmented into pieces before burning into oblivion.

Sometimes it was infuriating, to have heard of an ability but having _no_ idea how to do it yourself. Kasshoku would have even accepted training from a human at this point, although of course that was nonsense; humans didn't know how to use chakra. They'd lost the secret ages ago; now the few users believed it to be miraculous power granted by their gods. If only the fools bothered to read the books that their kind had written so long ago, they might not be such weaklings. But humans are ever a race ignorant of their past, and he doubted they would rediscover chakra any time soon.

Deimos slit his eyes and opened his mouth slightly, revealing rows of teeth in the kitsune version of a grin. _"Deimos was also the son of Ares, the God of War. It's not my fault the humans don't speak Greek; they certainly stole everything else about the culture. And actually Deimos is only what I go by when we meet other kitsune. I'm Cain for when I come to a human village intending actual harm and Abel when I only intend mischief. You should pay more attention."_

A muscle twitched in Kasshoku's jaw as he squeezed his teeth shut, choking off the growl threatening to rise out of his throat. The two brown tails not maintaining the mental link began to lash behind him. _"You _are_ aware that you're the only one who cared enough about a name to research a dead culture, learn its language, and pick something from it? That, __besides you and me, there's probably less than a dozen people in the world who know what the name means?"_

_"You're the one who insisted on sticking around in that ancient city for so long. How was I supposed to resist that library?"_ Deimos asked.

_"We 'stuck around in that old city for so long' because you figured out how to use chakra when we stopped there for the night. I thought someplace that had already been turned to rubble would be ideal, so we could practice with chakra without destroying anything that wasn't already ruined,"_ Kasshoku pointed out._"And, of course, because we didn't have to chase after frozen food, just warm it up a bit. I don't particularly want to know how old it was, but it hadn't gone bad...although I still can't believe you blew up half of a building trying to thaw out a chicken,"_ he added as an afterthought.

Both paused momentarily, thoughts running along the same line: _"Mmmm, chicken_."

_"You never mentioned how you figured out how we could use chakra in the first place,"_ Kasshoku commented. The question had plagued him for some time.

_"...I was pointing my tails at that frozen chicken and I started really wishing I had a fire to thaw it out."_

Kasshoku closed his eyes for a moment, slowly counting to ten. _"You learned how to use chakra because you were hungry and didn't want to have to chew through cold meat?"_

_"You could put it that way."_

_"You're an idiot."_

Deimos raised his head in the air haughtily, leaning back onto his haunches and striking a ridiculous pose, eyes glinting mischievously. _"No, I am a forward thinking individual, constantly seeking new solutions to the problems that plague us. I am an innovator!"_

Kasshoku's frustration at his companion and their situation in general evaporated at the hilarious pose, and he let out a short bark of laughter. _"Clown."_

_"You have yet to tell me why being a clown is a bad thing."_

_"Perhaps because your antics and unstealthy orange fur have a tiger following us right now?"_ Kasshoku responded.

_"You just noticed? The thing's been stalking us for almost an hour."_

_"I was a bit distracted by_ someone_ whining about how boring it is out here."_

_"I told you that you should pay more attention,"_ Deimos answered cheekily.

The conversation, which had begun to stray into very familiar territory - Deimos antagonizing and Kasshoku trying to ignore him - ended abruptly when the two foxes leapt apart, each being narrowly missed as the tiger, easily thrice the size of either kitsune, pounced down from a tree branch, landing with a thud on the newly vacated ground. The giant orange and black-striped beast growled before turning and leaping after Deimos.

_'Figures,'_ Deimos griped to himself as he jumped to the left, the tiger's outstretched claws coming so close he could feel them brushing against his whiskers. Kasshoku, being Kasshoku, had vanished into the underbrush the moment of the attack.

_'Coward,'_ thought Deimos, though he really couldn't blame the other fox. Massive tigers were something to be avoided. With that thought in mind, he turned and bounded towards a cluster of bushes he'd made note of while walking. When the majority of the food chain is above you at the physical level, paranoia becomes second nature.

This was not to be, as the tiger whirled around and began pounding after the smaller kitsune. Knowing he would never make it to cover in time, Deimos leapt with all fours, snagging a low-hanging tree branch with his three tails and changing direction midair. The claws missed him by a wider margin this time, and he fled through a clump of thorn bushes. He was small enough to wind his way through them, the tiger, not so much.

He could hear crashing coming from behind him; apparently the bushes were flimsy obstacles to the great cat. Ducking out of a break in the thorns to his right, Deimos continued his flight, knowing the only thing keeping him out of those long fangs was the close quarters of the forest. In an open area, he wouldn't stand a chance.

As if the powers that be had heard his desperate entreaty for more cover, the forest abruptly ended. Deimos dug his paws into the dirt. It quickly gave way to gravel, and he skidded to a halt, a mere paw's length from the edge of a steep cliff. He could see a small ribbon of blue at the bottom; it must be the river they'd abandoned last week. Looking over his shoulder, he saw that the cliff face stretched as far as he could see, and there was no cover behind him to duck back into.

The tiger slowly stalked out of the foliage, small cuts evident on its face from its rough trip through the underbrush. It let out a low growl, continuing the slow march towards the apparently helpless kitsune.

Deimos knew something of how simple-minded predators (read: non-kitsune) attacked their prey. Slow, almost stealthy approach to get into range for the lightning strike to take down the prey.

Kitsune are not prey. He would leap to the side the moment the tiger pounced at him, hopefully avoiding the thing's claws, which seemed sharper every time he looked. Plan in mind, Deimos waited, muscles tensed for one burst of movement.

_'Wait for it...wait for it...wait for it...'_ he chanted to himself. The tiger stopped for a moment, knees bending slightly in preparation for a jump, feral yellow eyes gleaming. _'He's about to-!'_

All of Deimos' preparations were for naught. The tiger pounced, lightning quick. There was no time to react as it jumped at something a half dozen feet to his left, and meeting only air, slid off the cliff. An enraged yowl reverberated off the cliff walls as it tumbled through the air before landing at the bottom of the cliff with an audible meaty cracking noise.

It sounded like the thing had missed the river. Deimos wasn't too torn up about the beast's fate, although the tiger did seem to be rather torn up about it himself; those rocks at the edge of the cliff were _wickedly_ jagged. Interesting, he hadn't known what tiger kidneys looked like...

Still though. The tiger had jumped at nothing, missing its intended target by a wide margin. _'What the fuck?'_ he asked himself as he craned his neck to look down at the thoroughly dead tiger.

So absorbed was he in ensuring that yes, the beast was dead and yes, he was still alive, Deimos didn't notice Kasshoku triumphantly marching up to the cliff. When the brown fox's tail brushed against his own and he flared his chakra, forming the link, Deimos jumped with surprise and had to scramble to avoid following the tiger.

_"So I've finally caught the 'Great Deimos' by surprise, eh?"_ asked Kasshoku, his thoughts tinged with humor.

Giving his friend a sour look, Deimos responded haughtily, _"Law of averages. Bound to happen eventually."_

_"It wouldn't have happened at all if I hadn't saved your mangy ass from that tiger."_

Ignoring the (utterly false) jab at his grooming, Deimos asked, _"Just what the hell did you do?"_

_"You may have spent all your time in that old city reading and blowing things up, but _I_ learned subtlety. Illusions. I put one on the tiger to make him think you were somewhere you weren't. Quite simple actually, although I doubt you could figure it out,"_ Kasshoku answered breezily, knowing the arrogant tone would rile his friend.

Uncharacteristically, Deimos didn't react at all to the insult to his intelligence. Instead, Kasshoku could literally feel his friend's thoughts racing, touching on one possibility before dashing off to another. Finally, the orange kitsune answered.

_"So...what _else_ can you do with those illusions?"_ he asked, mischievous glint back in his eyes. Kasshoku knew that look. It meant trouble for somebody.

* * *

Murakami Masaso led a great life. Like his father before him, and his father's father before him, and so on as far his family's history stretched, he was the daimyo of Ehime, and his manor in the capital city of Matsuyama was lavishly built and tastefully decorated. He and his line had ruled peacefully for countless generations over the small country. Recent times had been good, and the invention of a new dessert called "tarts" by a local chef, combined with a boom in their burgeoning shipbuilding industry, had given Ehime a marvelous trade in the specialty food with the nearby nation of Tokushima, who's leader was fairly addicted to the tarts. 

As befitting a ruler of a nation inside the city of "Pine Tree Mountain," Masaso's large, traditional residence was surrounded by pine trees, and their fragrance, always calming, filled the morning air. Masaso smiled as he calmly strode out of the curved tiled walls, the steep roof of his manor fading into the distance, his bodyguards keeping a respectable distance, until they were almost invisible. Good servants were hard to find; he'd gone through at least twenty people for each position before he found servants willing to be silent, bow, and keep their distance as he went about his business unless specifically called for. His wooden sandals clacked against the cobblestone streets, and Masaso couldn't help but broaden his smile at the sound. Prosperity had benefited the entire village, and paved streets were just one example of how.

As the leader of a country more economic than military based, Masaso had foregone his ceremonial armor and katana, and was clad instead in a silk kimono in the dark green of the Murakami Clan with a carefully designed, nigh unnoticeable, nagajabun underrobe to prevent his sweat from damaging the precious silk. Masaso might have been wealthy enough to afford hundreds of the silk kimonos, but he abhorred waste of any sort. Over the kimono was a thigh length haori overcoat, with his clan's symbol carefully sewn into the back, and he wore formal wide-legged hakama pants in a green that went nicely with that of his kimono.

Normally he would have dressed in a more casual manner, but today was an important day. Today he would give a speech before the lords and nobles that governed most of the cities of Ehime. He'd been assembling the gathering for the last week. It was a bother, but he liked to speak with the governors in person at least once a year in order to get a more personal feel for how his country was run. For the governors, who's jobs were on the line, it was a nerve-wracking experience. Masaso had replaced more than one for management that he had deemed incompetent. Like that man in Kumakogen...he'd had to send his cousin out to take over the town. Sadly, his cousin had been too busy reforming the logging town to come to the meeting, but that was to be expected. The previous governor had been diverting tax money to fruitless projects, like that shrine to Inari.

He grinned as he thought of all the money he'd made dismantling the shrine and reselling the precious metals and beautifully carved wood.

As he strode down towards the capitol building, Masaso mentally patted himself on the back yet again for not conducting governmental affairs from his own home as other rulers were wont to do. Placing things in the capitol building meant that when he was done governing for the night, he left, and no one could expect him to do anything until the next morning, resulting in far more restful nights, as no one pestered him about every tiny issue. The walk also provided a not-insignificant amount of exercise on his normal route around town and through the dock before arriving at the building. Today however, in the interests of keeping his clothing dust and sweat free, he had taken a much shorter, direct route.

Still, the exercise must have begun to pay off. The women of the city blushed and conversations halted as they bowed to him, and Masaso puffed his chest out a bit, glad that the seemingly unconquerable bulge of his stomach had begun to recede, for such a reaction to be garnered. He _knew_ his kimono had begun to fit a bit more loosely lately; it didn't squeeze him and constrict his breathing as much as it normally did. Even the men looked at his new, fit stature with wide eyes. Yes, today was a great day.

At a nearby tavern, a lean, short man with a faint orange tinge to his hair and a wide grin plastered on his face, along with a man with ruddy brown, hair knelt outside on the mats usually reserved for old men playing shogi, drinking tea. The red haired man quirked an eyebrow, and his frame shook, as if with barely concealed laughter, the tea inside his cup sloshing dangerously.

Turning to his brown-haired companion, the man asked, "He has no idea that he's walking around town completely naked?"

The other man grinned, revealing sharper-than average canines. "Utterly clueless."

"And everyone else can see that he's actually naked?"

"Yep."

"Doesn't he have an important meeting today?" the red-head asked, before taking a sip of the green tea.

"Indeed he does, and with every important official of the nation I believe."

The red haired man was forced to place his tea down, bringing his left hand up to muffle his laughter.

"It serves him right, the miserly bastard," the brown haired man said. "He replaced a governor for using public money to build a temple to Inari instead of sending it on to him."

The man removed his hand from his mouth, dabbing faintly at the tears glistening in his reddish eyes. "I'm not exactly devoted to the old fox myself, but that does seem a bit extreme."

The foxy grin on the brown-haired man's face only grew. "You know, if we mention this at the next temple we run across, we might get a favor. The old coot does love tricks like this, especially against a man like that."

"Why not? We have nothing better to do, Kasshoku."

"Come on then Abel, we'd best be on our way. There's still some of that tiger left, and I'm getting hungry again. Cooked food sucks," commented Kasshoku.

"That reminds me...I think I have an idea why we're not eating as often as we used to," began "Abel" as he rose from the mat, dusting off his pants as he did so.

"You have a theory on everything, and the only reason I haven't proven any of them wrong is because they're all impossible to test," pointed out Kasshoku, setting down his tea and standing. The tavern keeper would never know he hadn't been paid.

"Which means they could all be right," "Abel" answered logically as they began to weave their way through the busy streets, the rest of the populace ignoring them as merely two more foreigners in a port city that saw them every day, literally by the boatload. "You know how chakra is the mixture of physical energy and spiritual energy, as brought on by experience?"

"I remember you coming up with a long series of explanations out of some musty old book in that library that made about as much sense as a fish with five legs."

Ignoring the answer, "Abel" continued. "Well, since we've been running around for a few hundred years getting more and more experienced in life and chakra use, I think the spiritual element of our chakra is reinforcing the physical element, and our bodies are beginning to run off of chakra instead of food - "

Kasshoku brought a hand up, interrupting his friend. "If what you're saying is the older we get, the less we have to eat, you can keep your theories to yourself. I for one enjoy food, and _you_ can go meditate on how filling chakra is."

With that he picked up his pace, forcing Deimos to hurry up. Hopefully they would get out of the town before he ran out of chakra and turned back into a fox in the village square. The last thing he needed was humans running around yelling about how there were "evil foxes" running around disguised as humans. Stubbornly ignoring Deimos's calls to slow down, Kasshoku continued his quick pace towards the gates, forcing himself to not think about the idea that chakra might be replacing food.

It would explain why maintaining this human disguise was such hungry work, but he refused to admit that Deimos could have been right.

* * *

**Author's Notes**: 

Nothing important this chapter. Drop a review and tell me that I've done a decent job, or a crappy job, or that Overlay is the single greatest piece of literature ever put into the English language. I don't mind if you flame, just tell me what you think!

Edited 11-09-07: Grammar, spelling, flow issues, minor conversation tweaks, bits of the information on Ehime and Masaso changed to better fit chapter Four.


	4. Inari

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, but if I did I'd...give it to some of the more talented authors on this site. I'm not going to bullshit and say I'm one of them.

Disclaimer:**The Inari of Overlay is in no way, shape, or form meant to be an accurate representation of the **_**kami**_** Inari of Shinto. **Some Japanese mythology will influence Overlay, but this is not an attempt to be entirely accurate. I believe they call it artistic license. This goes for all mythical figures and items making an appearance in Overlay. To be honest, I _should_ create my own religion for the Narutoverse and use it, but...I'm lazy, and Shinto provides an amazing database of gods, goddesses, heroes, and mythical events and items to draw from.

Author's Notes: Sorry this is so late! See, a black cat crossed my path and I had to perform ritual harakiri suicide penance in order to absolve myself of the bad luck. (Kakashi-style lateness excuses are making a comeback I tell you.)

_"Talking"_- Mental link talking.

"Talking" - Normal talking

_'Talking'_ - Thoughts (Not used in conjunction with Mental link, as that would just be annoying.)

"For nothing is impossible with God." - Luke 1:37

**Overlay**

**Chapter Four**

Kasshoku and Deimos strode along the dirt path through the forest, which Kasshoku _swore_ led to a shrine to Inari. Deimos, arms behind his head, fingers woven together in his orange shock of hair, was beginning to have his doubts, despite the fact that he'd found Kasshoku a perfectly good map to follow. The fact that they were following a path meant that they had to be in disguise, which wasn't helping his mood, but neither of the two kitsune had any interest in being attacked by silly humans as "demons."

Deimos didn't think they would run into anyone on the abandoned path; they'd had to clamber over at least two dead trees in the middle of the road, and the underbrush had begun to grow up in the hard-packed dirt of the path. Obviously the route saw little travel, for obvious reasons. It was a path out to the middle of nowhere, no matter what Kasshoku said. He'd obviously misread the map. Finally, after another hour of walking at the worthless pace of a human, Deimos could stand it no longer.

"We're lost, aren't we?" he snapped, scowling at the brown-haired man beside him. Kasshoku's human form reminded Deimos quite a bit of Kasshoku himself: plain and not that interesting, on the surface at least. Underneath the unassuming exterior, Kasshoku was at least as intelligent as Deimos himself, even if he tried to be serious too often. Deimos had no idea why; they were kitsune, the incarnates of mischief, not monks. Kasshoku could be just as mischievous as Deimos, and had been, but he still insisted on acting "dignified."

Dignity, as far as Deimos was concerned, had never resulted in learning anything or having any fun, and as such was completely worthless.

Kasshoku stubbornly set his jaw. "No, for the fifth time, we're not lost. We're on a path, how could we be lost?"

Crossing his arms, Deimos raised one eyebrow. "Because we have no idea where we are or where we're going? Just because we're following a path doesn't mean we know where it goes."

"I_ told_ you, I know where we're going! There's a shrine to Inari further down the path. We should be there by tomorrow."

"You said that two days ago!" Deimos yelled, waving his arms in the air for emphasis.

Kasshoku huffed, "So my distance estimation was a bit off. I'm not exactly familiar with human distances and neither are you, so quit whining. It's the map's fault." Quieter, he muttered, "Stupid metric system."

"I'm the one who found that map so we could actually go along with this idea of trying to cash in on humiliating someone who pissed off a deity," Deimos pointed out, slightly wounded that Kasshoku was insulting his efforts.

"True. So it's not the map's fault, it's yours for finding a shitty map."

"Shitty map? I say you're a shitty pathfinder; we've passed that tree over there," Deimos responded, pointing at a lightning-struck tree, "at least three times."

Kasshoku rolled his eyes. "No we haven't. We've been going almost straight east this entire time; there's no way we could have gone in a circle. You're just bored."

Growling slightly, Deimos lapsed into silence. Kasshoku was just being stubborn. Turning their attention back to the path, the two continued the (incredibly boring) trek.

After another three hours, Deimos was seriously beginning to consider starting the "are we there yet" game when he heard the brush to the left of the path begin to rustle. The two disguised kitsune tensed, but after a moment Deimos relaxed. Meeting Kasshoku's eyes, he slowly shook his head. Too loud and slow to be any serious predator. The other fox was not so easily convinced, and remained wary, chakra tensed to release his human disguise for an easier fight or flight.

Finally the object of the noise made itself visible. Mostly by tumbling gracelessly down the slight incline separating forest and path and rolling for a few feet before coming to a halt in a dusty heap in the middle of the road. Deimos wasn't quite sure what it was, although it did appear to be vaguely human sized.

A moment later what looked like a walking stick tumbled out of the forest as well, rolling along the road before coming to a halt as a hand shot out of the heap and grabbed the stick. Using it as a boost, the thing, now clearly revealed to be a man, rose to his feet.

Deimos studied the man curiously and Kasshoku began slowly edging away, still wary.

The man was clad in tattered, dirty black hakama skirt of the kind worn by most swordsmen and by some travelers. His shirt was an orange, sleeveless affair that was tucked into the hakama, and a black obi sash held the ensemble together. Covering his feet were a pair of black zori sandals that looked more like boots. While obviously the material of his clothing wasn't of poor quality, it had definitely seen better days. Deimos wasn't entirely sure the shirt had come sleeveless; the openings at the shoulder appeared to be a bit ragged.

The man himself looked rather old to be traveling alone. His face had visible wrinkles and he had a beard that, were it a few inches longer, could be tucked into the hakama along with the orange shirt. His hair was shockingly white, and both it and the beard appeared to refuse to be groomed, as they went wildly in every direction. The beard did manage to maintain something of a downward shape as enforced by gravity, but the old man's hair was a hopeless tangle.

When the man bent over to dust himself off, Deimos saw a symbol on the back of his shirt, sewn on in a now-dirty white. It appeared to be ten concentric rings, each one larger than the last. The entire thing took up roughly a third of the back of the shirt.

Muttering something to himself, the man appeared to take notice of the two for the first time. He waved, bright blue eyes shining out behind thick eyebrows.

"Hello there! Sorry about that...attacked by trees. Tricky opponents, trees, always playing possum," he declared, utterly solemn.

Deimos turned to his companion and tightened his lips in an attempt to not laugh. Kasshoku frowned, slightly embarrassed that he'd been frightened of a crazy old man.

Trying to salvage something of his appearance, Kasshoku asked, "Who are you?" Perhaps if the man turned out to be some sort of warrior or chakra wielding priest his fear would have been justified.

The man scratched his beard with the tip if his walking stick, eyes scrunched up in thought. "My name...name name name..."

Deimos couldn't hold back his snicker at Kasshoku. He would _never_ let the other kitsune hear the end of this.

The old man nodded suddenly, causing his messy mop of grey hair to fall down into his eyes. "I'm blind!" he called out, flailing about with the staff.

The snicker turned into outright laughter, and Kasshoku hung his head. After several moments, the old man managed to get his hair out of his eyes.

"Damn trees. Cursed me, you see."

Deimos had long since run out of breath, and was now struggling to remain upright, with minimal success. Kasshoku glared at him, knowing full well that this incident would not be forgotten. The old man, noticing that neither was paying attention, lashed out lightning quick with the staff, rapping each on the head. "Pay attention! Youngsters these days, no respect."

Kasshoku's scowl deepened, and Deimos, after recovering his breath, responded jokingly, "We're older than we look."

The old man nodded slowly. "So am I, youngster, so am I. Time's been kind to me."

"How old are you? You don't look a day over a hundred," Deimos snickered. Kasshoku, standing next to him, maintained his scowl while rubbing the back of his head where the staff had hit him. Normally it would have been no task to dodge an old human's "attack," but he'd been a bit distracted. Damn Deimos.

The old man's face brightened. "Younger than a hundred? Really? Must be my healthy diet. Rice, red beans, and pure water. You paying attention? Eat healthy and exercise regularly and you might grow to be as old as me."

Deimos nodded sagely at the advice, although Kasshoku could see that he was clearly biting his cheek. Deciding that letting the old man lead the conversation could only lead to further embarrassment, he decided to speak up.

"Excuse me, but we're in search of a temple of Inari. I believe that this road leads to one, would you happen to know how far away we are?" he asked. The perfect question. Now he would get confirmation that there was indeed a temple and that they were heading towards it. That would give him_ something_ to use as a shield against Deimos's taunts.

The old man blinked for a moment. "Temple to Inari? Nearest one is about a week's travel to the southeast," he said, pointing off into the forest. "You'd have to backtrack along the road for about a day and take the fork to the left, then follow it for about five days."

The old man seemed to have lost his senility; perhaps the fall had only momentarily addled his wits.

That thought was ruined when the old man continued, "Or you could spend a month trying to go in a straight line through the forest...it'd be faster, but the trees are hungry this time of year."

Kasshoku closed his eyes, taking deep breaths. The old man was crazy, and Deimos would probably never let him hear the end of how a crazy human could find his way around better than a centuries-old kitsune. Slitting his eyes open, he could see that Deimos had shoved his hand into his mouth, biting down hard to muffle his laughter.

Deimos was having the time of his life. This was even funnier than the time when Kasshoku had mistaken a daimyo's wife for the daimyo's father sixty years ago!

"Kaliergo Ryzi! That's my name!" the old man suddenly declared, stroking his beard thoughtfully. "And a good name it is, too," he muttered, sounding very satisfied with himself.

Deimos widened his eyes in surprise, jaw clenching in sudden fear, biting painfully into the hand that had moments before been muffling laughter. He slowly pulled the hand out of his mouth, but couldn't prevent his jaw from reflexively clamping shut again. _'No way. He's got to be kidding.'_

Several problems cropped up with that thought as Deimos looked at the conversation with new eyes._ 'But he _did_ manage to hit each of us...and now that I think about it...I can't smell him.'_ The observation of the man's lack of smell would be a compliment among humans. Among kitsune, who had a highly developed sense of smell, it meant that something was wrong. Everything smelled. _'And why didn't I detect him before he was practically on top of us?'_ True, he'd sensed no killing intent to give the man away, like he had with the tiger, but a doddering old man shouldn't have been able to sneak up on him like that anyway.

Kasshoku, oblivious to his friend's sudden misgivings, appeared to have resigned himself to being made a fool of by the crazy old man and relaxed. "What are you doing out in the middle of nowhere? We haven't seen anyone else for days."

"Looking for someone," the old man promptly responded.

"Well, like I said, we haven't seen anyone for days. Who are you looking for?" Kasshoku continued, still missing Deimos gesturing for him to _shut up._

"Actually, I'm looking for two someones," the man answered. Turning to Deimos, he cocked his head, and a brief glint of mischief appeared in his eyes, just long enough for the kitsune to make sure he hadn't missed it. "You wouldn't happen to have seen them, would you? The two did me a favor a few days ago."

"I just said we hadn't seen anyone for days!" Kasshoku exclaimed. He was ignored by the other two.

Deimos thoughts were racing. _'Shit. Should I answer, or just play along and pretend I have no idea what he's talking about?'_ A careful study of the old man gave him no answer. Sighing, he thought, _'Hell. Might as well bite the bullet.'_

Licking his lips nervously, he opened his mouth and said, "I might have." Ignoring Kasshoku's confused look, he continued. "What favor are you speaking of?" In a movement that he hoped appeared casual he brushed his hand against Kasshoku's, flared his chakra minutely, and passed on one word before severing the link. Kasshoku's face twisted in confusion before taking a moment to study the old man. He returned his attention to Deimos, or most specifically the subtle signs of tension in Deimos's face. The orange kitsune was serious. Kasshoku's amiable appearance became forced, his entire being tensed, ready to flee at a moment's notice. Not that it would do him any good, if it came to that.

"Oh, they humiliated a man who ruined an agent of mine," the old man said offhandedly.

_'Fuck. I was right.'_ Dropping any attempt at pretense, Deimos sighed and said, "If you're referring to Murakami Masaso, that was us."

"What makes you think I'm talking about that fat fool?" the old man questioned, a grin widening on his face.

_'He's toying with us.'_ After a moment of thought, Deimos said, "Because I think you're no old man."

Raising his staff threateningly, the old man yelled, "Are you calling me an old _woman_?!?! Brat, I ought to give you a beating!"

Deimos almost laughed at the pose. "I don't think I could do anything to stop you, Inari."

Pouting, the old man lowered the staff before poking it into the ground, crossing his arms and leaning on it. "I never get to have fun for long these days. Last bunch I pulled this on never figured it out," he grumbled. When the two said nothing, he scowled. "Oh grow a spine, I'm not going to kill you. Now which one of you pulled that stunt with Masaso?"

"He did," the two said at the same time, pointing at each other. When the deity arched an eyebrow at the answer, Deimos waved a hand to Kasshoku, indicating that he should explain.

Inclining his head respectfully, Kasshoku said, "I was the one who actually cast the illusion, but Deimos planned it."

Raising one arm from the staff Inari snapped his fingers. "Deimos...terror in Greek? That's how you figured it out! Haven't had anyone figure out I was using a Greek translation of my name before. Ine-nari, growing rice, to Kaliergo Ryzi, grow rice. Never properly learned the language, so it's a poor translation at best, but no one's ever called me out on it."

Deimos had a sudden hilarious mental image of somebody telling a deity that it had made a grammatical error, followed instantly by a series of lightning bolts striking the fool. Gods are right, even when they're wrong.

"Now," continued Inari. "You two are...interesting. Kitsune working together when I'm not coercing them is somewhat...rare." His voice was laced with a question, but the two foxes remained silent. "Well, if you don't want to tell me, that's your business. I'm not exactly obsessed with controlling my chosen race...trying to force kitsune to do something they don't want to is rather like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall." Inari pouted childishly when he received only confused looks at the word "Jell-O." Propping his chin back on the staff, Inari studied the two for a moment.

Under the unwavering gaze, shifted nervously before Deimos asking, "What do you want?"

Inari grinned. "What makes you think I want something?"

"Do you always answer a question with a question?" Kasshoku said, scowling, frustration at Inari toying with him overcoming fear.

The grin widened. "Why would you ask something like that?"

Deciding that it would be wise to interrupt before Inari finished baiting Kasshoku into doing something stupid, Deimos interjected, "I think you want something because you're talking to us. You're a god, and I highly doubt that you would take time away from...whatever it is gods do to congratulate the two of us on an admittedly brilliant prank."

Inari slowly shook his head, clucking his tongue. "Silly little kit. Good reasoning, except for the fact that you seem to have failed to have noticed something." Deimos and Kasshoku followed a waved hand at the forest from the god. Their eyes widened - the forest was still. Completely, unnaturally still. Leaves had frozen in their fall to the ground, birds hung in the air mid wing-stroke, and the entire place radiated a complete lack of activity. Continuing, apparently amused at the shock on the two fox's faces, Inari said, "Time is such a fluid concept. You're really not taking up much of it."

"But...what...that's impossible...how..." muttered Kasshoku, eyes wide as saucers.

Ignoring Kasshoku's wonderful imitation of a fish, mouth opening and closing comically, Inari said, "But...you are right. I do want something from you."

Kasshoku snapped his attention from the forest, mostly due to a swift kick in the shin from Deimos.

"What would that be?" Deimos asked hesitantly. As long as he listened, he didn't have to do anything. If Inari did tell him to do something, he could always try and cop out with "I would like to do that," which was not "I will do that." Lying was...difficult for kitsune, and caused agonizing pain. Saying one thing and meaning another had, as a consequence, risen to an art form amongst the foxes. It was part of the reason humans regarded them as deceptive, despite the fact that there was no more honest race than the kitsune. Well, to the humans' credit, the foxes were intentionally deceptive with their words.

"I'm offering you two positions as my agents in this world. You do things for me, and I reward you suitably," Inari answered, fingers clasped together in a businesslike fashion, staff resting against his beard. "You can accept or refuse any request, no questions asked, although I don't know why you would. Most of the tasks are easy, and the rewards are unparalleled. I _am_ a god after all...it's hard to find a higher patron."

Something sounded off in all of this to Deimos. "If you're a god, why do you need agents? Why can't you just do everything yourself?"

The staff rapped him on the head again, moving so fast he hadn't seen Inari pick it up, much less attack with it. "I'm '_a'_ god. I'm not omnipotent or omniscient, no matter what people may tell you about my kind. More importantly...I swore a vow when I gained the tenth tail and ascended to the rank of one of the divines. I swore I would never again return to the realm of the mortals." The look of amusement on Inari's face faded for a moment, replaced by something akin to regret, before flickering out of existence.

Kasshoku arched an eyebrow. "Aren't you in the mortal realm _now_?"

Inari grinned, the almost ever-present sense of mirth returning. "I repeat: silly little kit. What makes you think that this is reality?" For a moment, the forest and Inari's old man form flickered out of existence, revealing an area suspiciously similar to a fork in the road the two kitsune had passed the day before. Then the forest and Inari reappeared.

"...an illusion," Kasshoku whispered in awe. He'd had to focus hard to make that stupid man in Matsuyama think he was clothed, and Inari was casually creating complete alternate realities in their heads at whim. The distance between god and three-tailed kitsune was suddenly thrown into sharp contrast.

"Indeed, although most priests would call it a vision. Now...prospective agents, what say you? All I need you to do is to escort a priest of mine to a town in Ehime by name of Kumakôgen. The town that had a shrine built to me with public funds. The shrine Masaso tore down and sold for scrap." Inari fairly hissed the last sentence, distaste for the human evident. Returning to a more normal tone of voice, he said, "While he's preaching to the villagers, you will take the form of pure white one-tailed foxes, to show that the priest has my favor. Basically your job is to walk to a town, get cooed over by women and small children, and then walk out with the priest."

"What do we get out of this?" Kasshoku asked, having the nerve to ask the question bouncing around the minds of both himself and Deimos.

Inari smirked, amused at the brown kitsune's presumption. "A pragmatist, I see. In this case I'll...reveal a trick about chakra usage. It will help you quite a bit, that I can swear on."

Deimos and Kasshoku glanced at each other, weighing the options. Easy task for something they had always wanted: more knowledge of chakra. Inari was, if you looked at it a certain way, nothing more than a kitsune who's powers had reached the level of nigh incomprehensible. He was still bound by the same rules. He could not violate a sworn oath without having his soul fragmented and burned into oblivion, he had a strong aversion to lying, and when he _did_ lie it came with extreme pain, so they could probably trust him...to a limited extent. Reaching their decision at the same time, the two nodded.

"We accept."

"Good," responded Inari. "The priest...well, you'll recognize him," he said, snickering, before the forest and the deity faded out of existence, revealing that the two were indeed at the fork in the road they'd passed yesterday. In the distance, they could see someone walking in their direction.

* * *

Deimos couldn't help but close his eyes and quietly chuckle to himself. "You'll recognize him" indeed. The elderly priest was instantly recognizable; he was the human Inari had disguised himself as, with minor differences. The hair was cut shorter, and not such an impossible mess, the sleeves of the shirt were present, and the rest of his clothes didn't appear to have been dragged through mud like the disguised deity's. He also led a pack mule by a rope, and the animal appeared to be unusually cooperative, stopping only once every few hundred feet to try and wander off. Other than that, right down to the ten concentric circles on the back of the shirt, the priest and the deity were identical. 

It was somewhat unnerving, to be talking with a mere human priest when, mere minutes ago, they'd been speaking with an identical figure who happened to be the god of their race.

"You know what we are, right?" Deimos asked the priest. Kasshoku was walking along the path to his right, hands in his pockets, staring off at nothing and frowning. Probably upset about how Inari had carefully herded them into this. Looking back on the conversation, it had been obvious that the deity had led the entire conversation to its conclusion, and offered just the right incentives to get the two kitsune to do the god's bidding. Kasshoku had never liked being controlled. Neither had Deimos, to be honest, but they _were_ going to get something out of this. It was more like contract work than servitude. It still rankled, but he could deal with it.

The old priest frowned and snorted at the question. "Of course I do, kitsune. Our god, Inari, came to me in a vision and revealed to me that he would be sending two of his servants to give emphasis to my words. However, I was under the impression that you would be in the form of pure white foxes..." he trailed off, obviously wanting an answer.

"We'll change into that form before we reach the village," Kasshoku snapped, obviously irked at being referred to as a 'servant' of Inari. "For now, it draws less attention to be human, and it's easier to talk."

The priest shrugged, ignoring the tone. "As you will. Come; the citizens of Kumakôgen await."

The trio began walking back in the direction Deimos and Kasshoku had come from, the priest and his mule on the left side of the road, Kasshoku on the right, and Deimos in the middle...where he would hopefully be able to prevent Kasshoku from placing an illusion on the man as a prank. While humorous, he didn't think Inari would appreciate the gesture.

Never one to remain silent for long, Deimos turned to the priest and asked, "So...what's your name?"

"Takahashi Monto," the now-named priest answered. Deimos almost asked if his given name Monto, "believer," had been given at birth or if he'd changed it, but decided that having the priest talk about himself would be dull. And when speaking with a priest of Inari, there was always a much more entertaining subject than the priest himself.

"So...how long have you been a follower of Inari?"

The priest took on a thoughtful look for a moment, and the group was silent, the only sound their footsteps and the dull thumping of the walking stick. "For...forty seven years now."

"Really? Far longer than the two of us," Deimos commented. The mention of his and Kasshoku's relatively brief service to the deity was by no means an accident; he wanted to know just how much the priest knew. If the man was an actual priest (most likely, considering Inari had dispatched the two kitsune to support the man) and not some overblown fool spouting nonsense, he might know something of the god worth knowing. From the deity's actions, it was quite clear that Deimos hadn't researched him well enough. Working for Inari was not, in fact, being stuck in a temple praying all day, as he'd believed.

Monto looked momentarily surprised at the remark before saying, "Ah. I apologize for my earlier presumption; I thought you more familiar with Inari. So you've only recently ascended to sanbi?"

Deimos and Kasshoku halted in the road, dumbstruck for a moment at the priest's mention of the two acquiring the third tail. After a few steps, the priest halted as well and turned to look on at them curiously.

"How do you know about that?" Kasshoku demanded, turning his glare from the sky to the priest. Deimos narrowed his eyes at Monto, studying the man closely. Apparently he was far better informed than most of his race about the nature of kitsune.

Monto shrugged. "You aren't the first kitsune I've worked with, and like I said, I've been a follower of Inari for forty seven years. The nature of your kind has been revealed to me over the course of those years, down to the fact that Inari himself is a kitsune who, for actions that have been lost to the sands of time, became a god."

"He mentioned that he'd vowed to never return to the mortal realm after he became a god," Deimos said.

Monto nodded his head in the direction of the red-headed kitsune. "I have heard that before, although no one seems to know why."

The conversation had begun to veer, and Deimos decided to switch back to the thing that had first captivated his interest. "Why did you think that we hadn't possessed the third tail for very long?"

"Because almost all kitsune, soon after they gain the third tail, are approached by Inari. The fact that you had been a 'follower' of Inari for far less than forty seven years meant that you couldn't have been sanbi for long, or you would have been approached by Inari sooner. However, had you for some reason _not _been approached by Inari after gaining the third tail, you would most likely have lived long enough and seen enough to learn how he works, and wouldn't be asking questions. Hence, you must not have had the third tail for very long."

Deimos was impressed. The priest appeared to be rather intelligent, and not the half mindless devotee he had expected. "We've had the third tail for almost a century now," Deimos responded, eyebrow arched. True, not a long time to them, but to a human...

"A hundred years is merely the blink of an eye to a god," Monto answered. "Even if it seems like an eternity to myself. I've been forced to learn that some of my actions have been part of plans that will only reach their fruition many years after my death. Speaking of actions, we should talk while we walk. Kumakôgen isn't getting any closer, and I'm certainly not getting any younger." With that, Monto resumed his walk towards the town, giving a jerk to the mule's lead rope to get the animal moving. The two kitsune, after a moment, began to follow, walking only slightly faster than the old priest in order to catch up without seeming as if they were running to follow his beck and call.

Lacing his fingers together behind his head and staring up at the sky, bored, Deimos tried to think of another question to ask the priest. Kasshoku beat him to it.

"So...what exactly do you know of Inari?"

Monto smiled to himself, as if he'd been waiting for the question. "Inari is sometimes called _'Desire-Fulfilling Inari,'_ and he is the god of luck, rice, foxes, and worldly success," he began in a voice that was deeper, more commanding, and more attention-grabbing than his normal voice. "He is a very rewarding deity, and worship of him is returned with his favor and his favor brings bounty." Here Monto paused for a moment. Deimos could see why the priest had been worth Inari sending kitsune to support him on several occasions; the man was an excellent speaker. "His servants" - Monto glanced at the kitsune and shrugged - "are fox spirits called kitsune. They help those faithful to Inari, and punish those who defy him."

"We've done something along those lines before," Deimos interrupted. "Have you heard of Murakami Masaso?"

Monto nodded. "Yes. He's the daimyo of this country, and I was sent to speak with the people of Kumakôgen about how he destroyed the shrine there."

"We 'punished' him by placing an illusion on him. He went to address the lords of Ehime in the nude, and had no idea. Still, we weren't doing it on Inari's orders, we just thought it would be funny."

The old priest blinked owlishly for a moment before howling in laughter. Kasshoku and Deimos smiled to themselves; it was always good to have someone appreciate your work. After the laughter had subsided to the occasional snicker, the old priest wiped a tear from his eye and grinned. "Well, that should certainly help my speech. Somehow I think Inari was involved in your illusion; he is usually quite subtle in the way he works."

"You were speaking of Inari rewarding those who are faithful and punishing those who are not?" Kasshoku prompted.

"Yes. Inari rewards those who serve him, and because he is the god of worldly success, those rewards are great indeed. The daimyo, for instance, are by and large all worshipers of Inari, Masaso being a rare - and most likely brief - exception. The reward is not always, and indeed, is usually not great wealth. Inari grants his followers something rare in this world: success. The worshipers of Inari are well looked after by their deity, and he will do all within his power to protect them, nurture them, and have them flourish."

Deimos had to question this. "You're saying the worshipers of Inari never know hardship? That seems...far-fetched."

Monto shook his head. "That's not what I'm saying. Those who follow Inari follow a hard path, as he can be demanding. I'm seventy three years old and I traipse about the world telling people like you about Inari. It's not always easy." At Deimos's continued skeptical expression, Monto changed tack. "Like any other god, Inari is not omnipotent. He helps those who help themselves, and no amount of sacrifice and prayer will make him fill a fishing net for someone, or convince a customer to buy something. His patronage merely amplifies the results of a person's own labor, for above all else Inari respects two things: hard work and the freedom of choice. Doing things for people is simply not the way he works."

Deimos shrugged. He didn't have to rely on prayer; he and Kasshoku had a deal with the god himself.

Seeing that, for the moment, Deimos was satisfied, Monto continued. "As for punishing those who defy him...as I said, Inari respects free will and hard work. There is nothing more guaranteed to earn his ire than to thwart those who have worked hard on his behalf, as Masaso did by destroying a fully built shrine and selling the wood and precious metals. I have no doubt that his punishment did not end with your trick. However, what did happen is a good example of how Inari responds to those who anger him. Masaso was not killed, his country did not become impoverished, and he did not begin to wither and sicken. Instead he was publicly humiliated, much as Inari was when a human destroyed a shrine to him. Inari does not act directly; the closest he will ever come to doing so is sending intermediaries such as ourselves to work on his behalf, and even that is not always done directly, as you yourselves have proved."

The two kitsune glanced at each other, bemused, before turning their attention back to Monto. "Continue, please," Kasshoku said.

And Monto did so. Deimos couldn't help but notice the look of peace and contentment that flickered over the man's features whenever he spoke of the god. Perhaps this was the success Monto had spoken of? He was obviously not that wealthy, clothes aside, as he was traveling alone with little in the way of supplies or money besides the mule. But something about him simply radiated...peace. As if he had great faith that no matter what happened, as long as he did what he was supposed to, things would turn out for the best, so there was no sense in worrying about it.

Deimos envied him that carefree certainty that things would end well.

* * *

Thankfully Kumakôgen was relatively close. After leaving Matsuyama, the two kitsune had headed northeast, towards Tokushima, the country bordering Ehime. They had only been traveling for a few days before encountering Inari, and Kumakôgen was only two days travel south, and a slight bit west. The trio had lapsed into a somewhat comfortable silence after Monto had finished speaking of Inari, and it had continued throughout the rest of the journey, broken only for brief conversations about sleeping arrangements. 

Monto had come well prepared. His pack mule contained two tents, one of which he offered to the kitsune. They declined, preferring to sleep in the open, but the gesture had been appreciated. The offer of travel biscuits and jerky was also politely refused, and if Monto noticed that the two had disappeared during the night and returned smelling faintly of blood, he didn't comment.

Kumakôgen was a quiet little logging town in the southeastern part of Ehime. A river to the east of the town contained several saw mills, which converted the lumber into usable planks of all sizes. From those saw mills, the planks were shipped via ox cart to Matsuyama, where the master shipbuilders used the wood to build the trading vessels and fishing fleets that brought the country its prosperity. Since their lumber was so in demand, both because of its quality and the close proximity to the shipbuilders, the town was prosperous enough to have several well maintained, yet still dirt, roads. Two inns, one located at the western entrance and one at the eastern entrance, also marked the town's wealth. A poor village wouldn't be able to maintain two such establishments; they wouldn't received enough traffic and customers.

It was into this town that Monto walked, and after stopping at one of the two inns to stable his donkey, he continued towards the center of the village, a pure white fox the size of a large wolf flanking him on each side. The two disguised kitsune played the role of heavenly foxes with ease, striding regally, heads held high, tails swishing dramatically, and catching the eye of more than one surprised villager. Deimos had to admit that it was extremely...gratifying, to have all of that attention directed at him. Monto lead the two foxes to the town square before seating himself on the edge of an ornamental fountain, saying nothing.

The trio slowly attracted a crowd, at first composed of small children eager to touch the "pretty kitties" and anxious mothers watching tensely, ready to snatch up their children at a moment's notice, but the kitsune made no threatening moves towards the children and the mothers slowly relaxed. Kasshoku had bristled at being referred to as a "kitty" - foxes were more closely related to _dogs_ than cats! - but had relaxed under the clumsy petting of the children. Deimos almost laughed at his friend's expression; it was like he was trying hard (and failing) to maintain a scowl. Not that the humans could tell what a scowl looked like on a fox. Distracted from his musings when one of the girls scratched a sensitive spot behind his ear, he let out a low, pleased growl, leaning into the touch. The girl giggled and continued to scratch the ear. He wasn't quite sure how Monto was going to get his message across by setting up a petting zoo, but he wasn't complaining.

The crowd quickly grew in size, and the women were soon joined by men intrigued by the gathering. Being a logging town of somewhat middling importance meant that Kumakôgen saw visitors with a fairly regular basis, but strange sights such as two apparently domesticated, pure white foxes following an old man were far from the norm. Besides that, it was a decent excuse to not man shop counters, do home repairs, or cook. Distractions were always welcome in the life of most villagers.

Finally, one of the men watching, unable to contain his curiosity any longer, called out, "Who are you?"

Monto smiled an inclined his head in the man's direction. "My name is Takahashi Monto, and I am a priest of Inari." He said no more, and turned his attention back to the children surrounding the kitsune, as if he hadn't a care in the world.

Unsatisfied with the answer, the man walked a bit closer, carefully avoiding tripping over any children. "Why are you here, sir? We don't normally attract priestly visitors."

Monto shifted his attention away from the children after quietly admonishing them to not pull on the fur or tails. This of course only planted the idea in the children's minds, who seemed to find being thwapped in the face by a furry white tail after yanking it highly amusing.

Deimos silently told himself that he would bite the priest for this. Turning, he gently butted head into the chest of the child who had pulled on his tail. The little boy fell to the ground with a squeal of delight before jumping up and grabbing the fox around the neck in a clumsy hug. Despite the fact that his very name meant terror, Deimos was having a hard time maintaining any irritation at the children. They were just...innocent.

"I am here to speak to you of my god, and his anger at the destruction of his shrine," declared Monto loudly, gaining the attention of the villagers. He then launched into a speech bearing a striking resemblance to his earlier one to the kitsune, changed slightly for his more human audience and excluding certain irrelevant details, such as Inari being an ascended kitsune.

When Monto began to speak of the kitsune, the fox spirit messengers of Inari, one of the children cocked his head to the side before pointing at Deimos and Kasshoku. "You!" he squealed, before resuming his previous activity of hugging Deimos. Monto continued, ignoring the small scale chaos of delighted children surrounding him. The mothers, momentarily disturbed at the implication that their children were playing with spirits, relaxed when the foxes' behavior remained unchanged. If the foxes were indeed kitsune, they appeared to be quite benevolent, and their subtle actions to prevent children from tripping over each other with flicks of their tails were not missed.

Once Monto had finished his speech about Inari, he began to speak of the destruction of the shrine, but was interrupted.

"We had nothing to do with that!" exclaimed the man who had prompted the entire conversation. Licking his lips nervously, he clarified, "I should know. My name is Watanabe Nobu, and I used to be the governor of Kumakôgen. We know of Inari, and wished to show our respect. I had the shrine built, but Masaso tore it down! And we can't do anything about it, because Masaso replaced me with - "

"Me," came a new voice. Monto turned to study the new arrival; the kitsune had already noticed the man's approach. It had been hard to miss.

The man was tall and bulky, towering over most of the villagers. He had a broad, flat face, and his nose was crooked, as if it had been broken on several different occasions. His shoulder length hair was contained in a tight ponytail, and it was cut closely in the front, preventing his hair from falling into his eyes and giving him a somewhat military appearance. He was clad in a cloth kimono in the dark green of the Murakami clan, a legless black hakama skirt that gave him freedom of movement, and expensive sandals that still appeared to be quite functional. More importantly however, was the fact that he was flanked by four men wearing sword belts, hands on their weapons. The man himself had a katana strapped to his sash, and like his sandals, it appeared expensive but far from ceremonial.

The children, distracted by the appearance of men with weapons, put up little protest as their mothers, sensing trouble, gathered them up. Most of the children, having relatively short attention spans, decided to stare at the strong looking guards, and the boys began to argue with each other over who would make a better soldier. Only a few clung tenaciously to the kitsunes' fur, and they were easily distracted by promises of sweets. Throughout the entire event, Monto had only looked sadly at the fearful mothers, though he couldn't blame them for being concerned for their children. The arrival of armed authorities at crowds usually meant trouble.

"Now," continued the man who was apparently the governor of Kumakôgen. "Why are you here?"

Turning to the governor, Monto answered, "I am here to speak for my god, Inari." If he was intimidated by the guards' threatening posture, he didn't show it.

The governor's lips quirked upwards and his lips thinned, as if he were trying to contain his smile. "Your god? Masaso-sama would appear to be the greater of the two. Masaso's house is still standing, but Inari's temple? Not so."

Monto smiled, closing his eyes in bemusement. "The mind is sometimes referred to as a temple. If recent events are any indication, that particular temple of Masaso's has collapsed. Or have you not heard of his decision to address the lords and ladies of Ehime in the buff?"

Deimos opened his mouth, baring his teeth in the kitsune version of a grin. The guards tightened their grip on their swords, but neither they nor the kitsune made any other movements. The tension ratcheted up another notch, and the crowd began to simultaneously part around the two groups and grow in size, eager to see the new addition to the spectacle of the kitsune and the priest.

The governor's jaw tightened, and he glared at Monto. "Are you claiming responsibility for that event, priest?"

In a gesture seemingly designed to infuriate the man, Monto shrugged. "I have never been to Matsuyama, and was in fact headed in the direction of Tokushima when Inari called me to come here. However, I think it no coincidence that the bout of madness occurred so shortly after the destruction of the shrine."

"You seem well-informed for a priest wandering the countryside at the behest of your 'god,'" the governor snapped. "Word of that incident only reached me two days ago, and then by private messenger." His words were met with silence. Narrowing his eyes, the governor turned to his guards. "Detain this man for questioning. I believe he somehow poisoned our lord and befuddled his mind."

Two of the guards stepped forward while the other two remained with the governor. Before they'd come within arms reach of Monto, the two kitsune swivelled their gaze from the governor to the approaching guards. Ice blue eyes stared into the suddenly nervous eyes of the guards, and Deimos and Kasshoku growled intimidatingly. They had no real desire to get into a fight with humans, but Inari had specifically told them to "walk out with the priest." That wouldn't be happening if Monto got himself thrown in jail.

When the guards stopped, the governor snorted in disgust. "Fools! They're just foxes. Probably little more than trained animals; they certainly didn't do anything to those kids." To prove his words, the governor put on a false smile, which looked rather disturbing next to his squashed nose, and reached out. Cooing out in a voice similar to the one a person would use on a baby or a pet, he sing-sung, "Good fox. You want to come over here? I have a treat for you." He cupped his hand so that the foxes couldn't see his palm, as if concealing a choice bit of meat.

Deimos turned a lazy gaze in Kasshoku's direction, who appeared to be containing the desire to charge the man with effort. Kasshoku had never appreciated being patronized. Deimos, on the other hand...enjoyed attention, even of the mocking sort. He always managed to return such attention in various satisfying and entertaining ways.

Lazily rising from his haunches, Deimos stretched, cat-like, before slowly walking in the direction of the governor. He raised his head and sniffed the air, as if curious. To all who looked on he appeared to be nothing more than a hungry, stupid animal. The governor smirked in triumph as Deimos neared, passing the two remaining guards, before reaching out and grabbing Deimos by the scruff of his neck. Deimos relaxed into the gesture, offering no resistance.

"I would let him go if I were you," Monto called out calmly. Next to him, Kasshoku shifted his attention from the governor's face, and away from thoughts of how much better it would look with claw marks going over the eyes, to the hand grabbing Deimos. He tried not to blink. He didn't want to miss whatever Deimos was planning to do.

The governor laughed. "Some kitsune. I am a 'messenger' for Masaso-sama, who has triumphed over your god; I believe that would make me more powerful than this little fox messenger, wouldn't it?"

Monto shrugged. "Suit yourself."

"Guards, detain this man. I tire of listening to his nonsen - " the governor was abruptly cut off as Deimos, with a burst of movement, twisted his neck free of the man's hand and took two steps forward.

The governor lived up to his swordsman appearance. His hand instantly shifted to his katana, and the blade was halfway out of the sheath before Deimos had finished moving. The guards echoed the gesture, but the governor abruptly froze, sword still not fully unsheathed, as he felt a prickling bit of pressure. The two closest guards, noticing something was wrong, approached slowly, swords drawn.

The problem was four wickedly sharp fox talons placed right on the governor's unarmored crotch. Deimos stood on hind legs, left forepaw on the governor's right thigh to balance himself. The governor shifted his stance minutely, but a slight twitch of Deimos's paw and the sound of cloth ripping froze him again. The guards, almost within striking distance of Deimos, halted when the governor began to furiously shake his head.

"Hmmm. Now it's the fox who has the human in his grasp, and not the other way around, isn't it?" Monto mused aloud. Kasshoku, who could see what was happening quite clearly from his lower viewpoint, sighed. Trust Deimos to find the most underhanded, dirty, cheap, and humiliating tactic.

It was a large part of why Kasshoku liked the other fox.

Kasshoku watched idly as one of the two guards sent to arrest Monto lunged forward and tried to grab the priest. Tried being the operative word, as he missed the priest by a wide margin and tripped over the edge of the fountain, crashing into the statue in the middle. The man fell into the water, unmoving, and his companion leaped towards him, trying to drag the man up onto solid ground before he drowned himself. Kasshoku turned his attention back to Deimos; the guards would have little success in reaching the priest. Illusions regarding depth perception had always been Kasshoku's favorites. Very little effort was required, just a small refraction of light, and they were extremely effective.

Unfortunately, all the commotion near the priest had distracted Deimos for one fateful second. The governor, sensing the kitsune's momentary lapse, had shoved out with his left hand and twisted his hips, jerking his katana the rest of the way out of its sheath and removing the immediate threat to his manhood. Deimos stumbled backwards, off balance while standing on two legs.

One of the guards behind Deimos lashed out with his sword, aiming to cut the kitsune in two.

Deimos saw the sword arcing downwards through the corner of one widening blue eye. The world seemed to slow down. He could see, with perfect clarity, the descent of the sword towards his back. It was, at once, both unbearably slow and impossibly swift.

Kasshoku didn't have time to react, and even if he did have time no illusion could stop an attack already in motion. The priest, shooting to his feet, would never make it.

_'So this is how it ends? One human, one slip, and it's over?'_ Deimos thought, oddly detached. The sword continued to make its unavoidable approach. _'I'm...going to die? I'm going...to die. I'm going to die.'_

Something inside Deimos snapped. _**'No.'**_

Adrenaline surged through his brain, shutting down everything not immediately essential to survival. Acting on pure instinct and adrenaline-filled impulse, Deimos channeled every bit of chakra he could muster into his tail. A slightly detached part of his brain noted the ease with which it happened, the way his tail focused and refined the chakra as he channeled it.

He expelled it in an unstoppable torrent, thinking only, _**'Burn.'**_

The world, still in slow motion, seemed to slow even further as a column of blue flame erupted from the tip of Deimos's tail, rocketing with explosive force into the attacking guard ever so slowly. Deimos saw, with perfect clarity, the way the slash was halted, then blown backwards, the way the man's clothes began to slowly char before erupting into flame.

The way his eyes melted before he'd finished reflexively blinking. The way his skin began to blacken, the way that every single exposed hair was burned out of existence, the way that the palms of his hands, momentarily protected from the brunt of the fire by the sword hilt, were abruptly subjected to the pain of burning as the cloth wrappings of the hilt caught on fire.

The guard's lower body was free from the instantaneous, searing agony that surged through the man prior to his almost as instantaneous death. The column of fire had been directed upwards from Deimos's tail, and soared a dozen feet into the air behind the man before ending as abruptly as it had begun.

There was utter silence as the world resumed its normal time flow, and the guard fell backwards, _very_ dead, ruined sword thumping to the ground next to him. The guard near the fountain, who had finally managed to pull his friend from the water, slowly edged backwards until he bumped into the fountain. He appeared to be seriously considering jumping in the water as a preemptive defense against any more flames.

Monto's eyes had widened, and his lips silently formed one word. Foxfire. He'd only seen Yonbi perform it, and even then it drained them.

The governor, the surviving guard next to the governor, and the crowd stared at Deimos with mixed expressions of shock, awe, and a trace of fear.

Deimos, chest heaving, turned his attention back to the governor. He growled and let out a short bark before taking a step forward. The governor and his guard took a step backwards. Another. Another, until the governor caught sight of Deimos's eyes. In his exhaustion, the shapeshift had begun to crack, and the first thing to go had been the minor details, things that only looked wrong if you'd seen the way he was supposed to look. His red eyes shone through the fading blue illusion, and the tips of his ears and paws had begun to turn his natural orange color. To the governor's frightened eyes, the fox appeared to be turning from a white, angelic creature into a bloody, demonic one.

Kasshoku recognized the signs. Deimos called himself Cain and Abel partly as a self-deprecating joke about his bent for melodrama, but it was also accurate. When Deimos took the name of Cain, it was like he was letting go of any restraint. It was a sign, when he invoked that name, both to himself and those around him, that blood would be spilled. The humans may not have heard anything to that effect, but the growl and the distinctive bark were all he needed to know. Deimos would not stop until the threat was gone.

Breaking free of his momentary paralysis, Kasshoku bounded in Deimos direction before coming to a halt at the orange kitsune's side. Kasshoku appeared to be glaring at the governor, who quailed under the added attention, but in reality all of his focus was on Deimos. Subtly brushing his tail against Deimos's, which had begun to slowly split at the end into three distinct appendages, he flared his chakra, forcing the mental link.

As expected, he met only chaos. Deimos was still running on instinct from his brush with death, and the last thing on his mind was rational thought. Giving his chakra a _twist_ that had always given Deimos a splitting headache when performed during the mental link, he grabbed the other kitsune's attention, snapping him out of his primal state. Kasshoku let out a sigh of relief; every time he did that he was afraid that it would be the one time it wouldn't work. The one time Deimos got himself killed with his unrelenting determination.

_"Kasshoku?"_ Deimos's mind was still foggy with bloodlust.

_"Deimos, calm down! You're about to collapse."_

_"I feel..tired..."_ Deimos answered blearily.

Giving up any attempt to get sense out of his friend when he was that exhausted, Kasshoku began to feed chakra into Deimos, bringing the other fox's reserves up enough to take the edge of the exhaustion and wake him up enough to think. He couldn't do more without draining himself; the transfer had never been efficient.

The governor and the remaining guards had taken the opportunity to execute a strategic retreat. Or, as the villagers would later tell it, had fled with the fear of god in them. The villagers themselves appeared like they were about to follow.

Monto defused any nervousness in the crowd by clucking his tongue, ignoring the scent of charred flesh that wafted through the air and drawing the crowd's attention back to him. "I told him to let the fox go. I _told_ him that Inari was more powerful than the Murakami, more powerful than any human. He should have listened," he finished mournfully. Turning to the crowd, he gestured towards the fallen guard and asked quietly, "Who will carry him?"

A half dozen men and one woman stepped forth from the crowd. Together they lifted the guard, each trying to ignore the cracked, blackened skin and the way the body was still hot to the touch. They carried the body in the direction of the guard house, where the guard's body would remain until his family claimed it. Then, depending on their beliefs, he would be cremated or buried. Monto remained at the fountain, eyes closed, chanting a prayer to the departed while Kasshoku lead Deimos back to the fountain.

The crowd began to slowly disperse, some to help with the impromptu funeral procession, more to spread the story. Murakami Kenji, governor of Kumakôgen, close cousin to the head of the royal clan and daimyo of Ehime, Murakami Masaso, had fought against the forces of Inari. Human weapons and might had stood no chance against the divine fire of one of Inari's messengers, and the governor had fled.

* * *

A week later, Deimos had recovered from the chakra exhaustion. He and Kasshoku left with Monto, villagers bowing their heads to the trio as they passed the gates. Monto told the story of what had happened while Deimos lay semi-comatose. 

The governor, Kenji, had left his small remaining complement of guards behind as he went to Matsuyama to personally relay events to his cousin, most likely in hopes that he would receive some sort of aid.

What argument he would have made for sending troops to assist him in dealing with an old priest and two foxes would never be known, as he arrived in the middle of a revolt. The Watanabe, a clan distantly related to the Murakami and counted amongst the nobility, had risen up against Masaso. They cited his insanity, specifically in the instance where he address the governors of his lands in the nude as if nothing were wrong. A thin pretext, but they had long sought to replace the Murakami. When Watanabi Nobu, former governor of Kumakôgen, arrived, bringing word of the "Battle of Kumakôgen," his clan was quick to seize on the rumor, spreading and distorting the event until it was eventually told as an all-out war between Inari himself and a regiment of Masaso's soldiers.

With the royal family apparently the enemy of a powerful god, the Watanabe quickly but bloodily replaced the Murakami with the help of the populace and several pious officers of the guardsmen. Kenji never made it to the palace. Within three days of the event, the Murakami were no more. The small children were adopted into the Watanabe, while any males above the age of six were executed. Some managed to flee, but most were dead. The women were quietly _encouraged_ to join isolated shrines to Inari as penance for their family offending the deity.

If rumor was to be believed, the new daimyo of Ehime, Watanabe Seiji, would be rebuilding the shrine at Kumakôgen and expanding it into a full scale temple with a complement of ten priests, along with restoring Nobu to his former governorship. He had also redesigned the royal symbol to include ten concentric rings, symbolically located above the old symbol. Seiji appeared to be making pains to be seen as a _very_ devout follower of Inari, with good reason. Whether his faith was real, and he thanked Inari for making him the daimyo, or feigned, and used only as a tool to give himself an air of divinely chosen daimyo was irrelevant. Inari had come to Ehime, and it was doubtful anything could ever remove his presence.

The trio split when Monto disappeared one night. The kitsune had been out hunting, and when they returned the campfire had burned low, and the man and his donkey were gone. The tracks lead in the direction of Matsuyama, but the two didn't follow. If Monto wanted to go off on his own, that was his choice. Or perhaps it was Inari's.

Idly poking the fire with a stick, still in human form, Kasshoku frowned, as if something had just occurred to him. "We were supposed to be told something about the way chakra works for this," he muttered, half to himself.

Deimos, staring up at the stars, answered idly, "I think I figured it out."

"What?"

"Remember how the priest said Inari helps those who help themselves?" When Kasshoku slowly nodded, Deimos continued. "He said he would 'reveal' something about chakra, not that he would tell it to us."

Kasshoku snorted. "So we got nothing out of that? You almost died!"

"Exactly. And in that moment where I was about to die, where there was _nothing I could do_, I did something I never would have thought of."

"What was that?" Kasshoku asked curiously, half his attention on the sparks that flew every time he poked the fire.

"Something ridiculously simple. I channelled chakra through my tail. It's easier," Deimos answered. At a puzzled look, he expanded on his answer. "Normally we just focus on something, and shove chakra out of whatever's closest, usually our mouths or eyes, right? Well, except when we're doing the mental link. That would be...awkward."

"Get to the point, Deimos."

"I don't know how to explain it. It's just _easier_ to push chakra through your tail, instead of trying to do it with your eyes and concentrating. It's like...a funnel. You have something to direct the flow with. I bet if we tried to do the mental link with our paws, we couldn't keep it up for an hour."

Kasshoku appeared to mull this over for a moment. "If you're right, and all of the 'rewards' Inari gives us come in a similar, 'must almost die in order to learn for yourself' fashion, then this job sucks."

Laughing, Deimos asked, "Got any better ideas for what we can do? Life's boring without a little excitement."

Kasshoku put on fake scowl. "No." Turning the scowl into a grin, he said, "That was fun."

"_You_ can have the fun next time while _I_ stay back and play with the water fountain."

Lazily turning, the unburned edge of the stick he'd been toying with in hand, Kasshoku took aim for a moment before chucking it in the general direction of Deimos. He missed, but the flaming end of the stick still came within an inch of his friend's nose.

Deimos merely closed his eyes and yawned. "Find something else to practice your aim on, something you can hit. Like a house."

A slightly sleepy, "You've got a big enough head," was his only answer. Content to let Kasshoku have the last word this once, Deimos drifted into sleep.**  
**

* * *

Kakashi blushed over his orange book as he walked out of the hospital, leaving a disgruntled Sasuke behind to stay overnight. Medical jutsu had healed the puncture wound well enough, but it was standard practice to give the patient at least one day and night in the hospital, a large portion of which was given over to physical therapy. Making sure that tendons and ligaments had reconnected properly, that nerves would respond in a normal fashion, and other basics of ensuring proper healing. 

Such niceties were not always observed of course. In a field situation where combat could occur at any moment, one took whatever healing one could get and hoped for the best. If muscles had misaligned, and the ninja lived to make it back to the hospital, they could always endure a long - and excruciatingly painful - process of having the affected area slowly torn apart, centimeter by centimeter, and put back together properly.

Most ninjas preferred to walk with a slight limp and take administrative duties as opposed to going through the process.

Flipping the page, Kakashi effortlessly walked through the busy streets of Konoha, avoiding any and all obstacles while remaining completely engrossed in his book. Night was approaching, shifts were changing, and the streets were packed as people got in that last minute of shopping before heading home. It was quite a feat.

Raising a hand to his mouth to cover his giggle, Kakashi reread the passage. He had, of course, read _Icha Icha Paradise_ enough times to be able to recite the book from memory, including the ad in the back for the upcoming _Icha Icha Violence._ November 20th, exactly forty-two days, five hours, seventeen minutes, and eleven seconds from today. Not that he was counting. The thought of waiting so long for the sequel brought a momentary sigh from the laid-back jounin. It was currently a quarter hour till seven on October 8th; such a long time from the second book in the masterfully written _Icha Icha_ series.

Sensing a sudden obstacle in his path, Kakashi looked up from his book, only to have his entire field of vision blocked by a hand in a distinctive "thumbs-up" pose. He supposed he should be thankful; with the hand in the way the ping on Gai's teeth could only be heard, not seen. Suddenly the hand was withdrawn and thrown into yet another dramatic gesture. Unfortunately, the new pose did not block Kakashi's view of "Konoha's Beautiful Green Beast."

"Rival Kakashi! I sense that you are depressed; perhaps you have realized that this smut dampens your fiery spirit?" came the enthusiastic yell. Kakashi rolled his Sharingan eye behind his hitai-ate; his visible eye remained unmoving. A handy talent for expressing frustration without actually expressing it.

"Hm?" Kakashi asked, as if he had missed the exclamation. As if anyone within a hundred yards could have missed it.

As always, the dramatic backdrop of sunset and wave-beaten clifftops appeared from nowhere while Gai howled something about how "hip" his "Eternal Rival" was. If Kakashi was lucky, Gai would promise to go turn a dozen trees into toothpicks, and then build an exact replica of Konoha in it's entirety, to scale, with the toothpicks in order to somehow beat Kakashi.

It would be the third time he'd seen that particular event, and he really should be due for a streak of good luck right now; he hadn't gotten a break in days. First the incident at Wave, then Sasuke failing to understand the first lesson, teamwork, and Sakura traumatized, most likely trying to deal with it with a yelling contest with Ino. Alas, his luck appeared to have abandoned him for good. Not that he'd ever had any good luck, now that he thought about it...

"I have heard that your genin team has been struck down in the prime of their youth!"

Carefully weighing his options, Kakashi determined that brushing Gai off would take longer and require more effort than actually telling him what he so obviously wanted to hear about. He still refused to be distracted from his book, and returned his gaze to it.

"A bit of an exaggeration, Gai. You make it sound like they've died," Kakashi said, flipping a page he hadn't read. It didn't matter; he could pick the story up anywhere with ease.

"Their innocence may have," responded Gai, uncharacteristically somber.

Kakashi closed his eyes momentarily, grimacing behind his mask. "It happens to us all sooner or later. I don't like it either, but it's part of being a ninja."

"You disappoint me, Eternal Rival!" yelled Gai, fire back in his voice. "You have left them on their own in such a turbulent river of sorrow, instead of guiding them to peaceful waters!"

Kakashi idly wondered where Gai had bought the massive collection of cheap poetry to quote before answering, "I'm their commander, not their mother. If I start intruding on their personal lives..."

"The spark of compassion could be kindled in you, oh cold one! Your flame of youth has burned low!" came the response. Kakashi nearly dropped his book, one eye widening in surprise at the accusation. Covering the slip by snapping the book shut and tucking it into his kunai pouch, Kakashi glared at Gai's suddenly forbidding visage.

"If I intrude on their personal lives," he repeated, making sure he wouldn't be interrupted this time, "I wouldn't be able to help. I learned to deal with death when I was something they should never have to be - a true ninja."

Gai's expression softened slightly. "You would be surprised, Kakashi. Sometimes, it's just the knowledge that you care what happens to them that can help your students."

Kakashi rocked back on his heels, trying to consider an appropriate response. By the time he'd realized he had nothing, Gai had disappeared. Strange, how the huge man in green could do that so quickly.

Kakashi reached for his kunai pouch, intent on momentarily distracting himself with _Icha Icha_, but his hand froze on the flap. Making an impulse call, a rare decision for the jounin, Kakashi turned in the direction of Naruto's house. The boy was probably drowning himself in ramen, and the least he could do was drag Naruto out to get something healthy to eat.**  
**

* * *

Bull cursed his poor luck. He'd made it to the first floor, where he knew the triplets were. They had probably been given a temporary leave from missions; it was a bad idea to send out dog nin when their dogs were not at peak performance. 

However, this section of the first floor looked to have been designed to be confusing. The walls and rooms were all composed of shifting screens that could be moved at any time. Given Bull's current need for stealth, and the fact that the building was in use, and the way the Inuzuka kept shifting the rooms and paths while he hid and waited for them to pass by, it would take him no small effort to get to the stone-walled kennel in the southeast of the building. Normally he could find his way through any maze with the use of his nose, but the screens were shifted often enough that there was no distinctive smell path to follow.

Never one to give up, Bull tried sticking to the outskirts of the room, keeping the stone wall in view as long as possible. It was a good reference point.

As with all good things, the guiding presence of the wall came to end. Well, the wall didn't end, but Bull's contact with it did, as he was forced to follow a turn to the right, then another, with no possible opportunities to get back to the wall.

He was heading south, or maybe southwest now, he really couldn't tell. The screens weren't always completely straight.

Pausing for a moment, Bull closed his eyes and inhaled deeply through his nose. Scents rushed in, and he slowly filtered through them. Not that one...that was too sweet...that smelled of earth and flowers, close but no...fire? What was burning? But that wasn't what he was looking for...ah! Bull had caught a whiff of that elusive trail. The earthy, musky, yet slightly sweet smell of the triplets.

Focusing with every bit of concentration, relying solely on instinct and trained reaction to save him if anyone happened upon him, Bull followed the scent.

He turned left and went down the hall, before an involuntary reaction had him duck into a room, letting a distracted old man pass by, oblivious to his presence. Bull scrunched up his nose and shook his head; the old man really needed to lay off the cologne.

He snuck back out of the room and resumed his search. Another left, followed by an immediate right turn, followed by another brief trip down a screen-littered hall. Another right turn; he was getting close.

Bull turned right one more time, and saw the stone wall. He was almost there!

Another short series of turns got him to the wall and he was out of the maze of screens. Bull looked out the slit of a window to his left, into the setting sun, head held high in triumph.

...wait a second.

The sun was setting, meaning the window was to the west, and that he was facing...north. He'd been trying to get to the southeast.

Fuck. He was right back where he started.

Turning back to the maze, Bull sighed. Well, it wasn't like he could go outside again. The patrols would have changed by now, and he would never make it without being detected. Setting his jaw, Bull trudged back into the labyrinth.

Nothing was more stubborn than a bulldog, not even a damned wall.**  
**

* * *

**Author's Notes:** The "Things You Might Not Have Noticed" section of closing Author's Notes in the previous chapters have been removed in order to get a more accurate word count. I won't be using it in the future for the same reason, sorry. If you have a question about anything, feel free to ask in a review. If you're new to Overlay, and have no idea what I'm talking about, don't worry about it. Also, still waiting on someone to guess what book inspired this. Your only hints are that yes, it is a _book_, and there is _no_ fanfiction for it on this website. There's also a brief plot summary in the Announcements. 

The disclaimer about Inari was made bold on purpose. Overlay's Inari shares superficial similarities with the actual Inari, but other than that is my own creation and is not truly worthy of the name. To give you an example, Inari actually usually appears as a woman. However, in my little world (they know me here) Inari's kitsune form was male, so despite the fact that he can appear as anything he wants, man, woman, fox, three headed fish, whatever, he is still male.

Sorry if the cute mental image of pure white foxes being mobbed by children overwhelmed you. But I had to do it! The thought of a chibi Kyuubi being loved by children just amuses me to no end.


	5. Sorrow and Rage

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, but if I did, I can guarantee you things would be_different._ They would suck, most likely, but they would be different.

**Author's Notes - Important for once:** 1500 years have passed in the Deimos universe. Explanation in closing notes. First one to guess gets to claim a fic request from me! Also, I have a good reason this was so late! I recently adopted two kittens from the Humane Society, and they're...demanding little furballs. But I still loves em. (Goes off to play with Jinx and Cali.)

Key:_"Mental link talking" - _"Normal talking" - _'Thoughts'_ - _True meaning of conversation, emphasis, or sound effects, which you'll understand when you get there -__**"Thought projection"**_

_"God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live."_ - Stephen King

**Overlay**

**Chapter Five**

Night had fallen in Konohagakure no Sato, the Village Hidden in the Leaves. However, this by no means meant that the "village" had quietly gone to bed. Konoha could more accurately be described as the "City in the Leaves," as the term village was inappropriate for a city containing over a million souls, and the last word that could be used to describe it was "hidden." Konoha had a thriving night life, spotlights dotting the sky and neon signs dispelling the darkness, making the entire town look like one big target - especially around this time of the year.

Two days from now would be October 10th, the single greatest celebration of the year: the anniversary of the defeat of the Kyuubi no Youko, the Nine Tailed Demon Fox. The holiday was a mix of cheer and sorrow, for it also marked the day a third of Konoha's military had died, including the revered Yondaime Hokage.

For some, it was marked with anger and fear, as the Kyuubi walked among them, celebrating its rebirth. Celebrating the fact that it could taunt them with its very existence, that it was still alive despite the best efforts of the Fourth. The anger was kept well-hidden, as no one was fool enough to try and enrage the demon, but it was still there.

Still, it was the single greatest party night of the year, and most stores were closed for the 11th as well. Many people stayed inside on the 11th, nursing hangovers, and would have made poor customers and even poorer workers. Already, bars had begun to order extra stocks of alcohol for the occasion, festive paper lanterns had been hung from roofs throughout the city, and if one looked up at the right moment, one could see the occasional burst of light as fireworks exploded in the air. Some people simply had no patience.

Hatake Kakashi ignored the preparations as he slowly walked in the direction of Naruto's apartment. October Tenth had never been a party day for him. The anniversary of his sensei's death had always been spent on his own, typically in his apartment. He couldn't find solitude at the memorial stone on the Tenth, not with every single person in the village stopping by at least once and leaving various gifts for the departed. Some of the people he knew, most likely Gai, would try and drag him along with them to try and get him to make an idiot of himself along with them.

Kakashi would always have to make up an excuse, or in Gai's case, pull a hasty escape in order to maintain his solitude. Some people just didn't understand the need to be alone.

It wasn't like he hadn't tried drinking until he forgot anyway. It just...hadn't worked out well. Or at least that was what the incident report the Hokage had read to him, after he'd woken up in an ANBU holding cell three days later, had indicated. Apparently, Kakashi was not a happy drunk.

He passed a small knot of works next to a half unloaded cart, smoking and nodding as one of them talked in hushed whispers.

Kakashi caught the word "demon brat" and resisted the temptation to have a..._conversation_ with the men. Nothing physical, oh no, that was beneath a jounin. The insinuation that they'd broken the Edict of Silence in the presence of a jounin, on the other hand, was quite appealing.

But it wouldn't change anything. So he kept walking, ignoring the men who had ignored their hero's - Kakashi's sensei's - last wish. The Sandaime had told Kakashi of Minato's final words. He'd memorized them, and tried to take them to heart, even though it was hard - _so hard_ - to not blame Naruto for Minato's death.

"You...are the true hero of this village. Don't you dare die..." had been the Yondaime's last words. Simple enough, really. Naruto was a hero, and he should be treated as such. Still, Minato had known enough to know that Naruto would probably not be regarded as a hero. The heartbreaking words, "Don't you dare die" echoed in Kakashi's mind. He would fulfill that last wish of his sensei, even at the cost of his own life.

He was, after all, the sole remnant of a team that had all given their lives for Konoha. He couldn't let his loved ones who had gone before him down.

Uchiha Obito. The boy Kakashi had never truly appreciated until he was gone. Kakashi had lost an eye trying to save Obito from an Iwa nin after the boy had run off to try and rescue Rin on his own. If he'd agreed with Obito in the first place, instead of insisting on following the rules and abandoning Rin, they would have arrived together. Kakashi wouldn't have lost his left eye.

The blood loss wouldn't have slowed him down when the final Iwa nin triggered a rock fall mere moments after they'd freed Rin. He was fast, so fast he could move until the world disappeared in a blur. It had been why he hadnt been able to properly use Chidori; he moved too quickly to see any counter.

But he had insisted on the rules, he had lost the eye, and the blood loss had slowed him down. He hadn't been able to outrun that boulder. Obito had turned around and thrown him out of its way, only to be crushed himself. Kakashi still wasn't sure he would have been able to do the same, were he in Obito's place. He knew _he_ would have been bitter. He wouldn't have spent his last few breaths smiling, asking calmly to have his eye surgically removed to replace the one his teammate had lost, beatific expression belying the fact that half of his body had been crushed.

And so Obito had died, passing his Sharingan to Kakashi as a belated present for his promotion to jounin. The entire thing had been Kakashi's fault; he deserved to have been executed, not given Konoha's most powerful Bloodline Limit.

His thoughts began to run along a worn, familiar groove, as did his feet. He unconsciously shifted directions, lost in the past.

Rin. She'd never mentioned her surname, and the pained look on her face every time someone had brought up the subject of clans or families had prevented any of the team from asking. But she'd been an amazing medic, good enough to ask to be transferred to a civilian hospital and have her request approved. Good medics were not to be wasted on the field of combat; only those of middling talent, able to staunch a wound and patch you up enough to _make it_ to a good medic were supposed to be out on the battlefield.

But she'd had a crush on Kakashi, and treated Obito like the little brother Kakashi assumed she'd never had. He'd ignored her obsession completely, and let her keep chasing him. If he'd told her he wasn't interested, maybe she would have transferred to that hospital off in a safe, non-combat zone.

That hadn't happened, of course not. She'd stayed on with Team Seven, patched up Kakashi more times than he could count, and brought an element of dependable normality to his life. The normal - the dull and boring - is craved by some ninjas as much as some civilians crave adrenaline rushes. She would ask him out, he would ignore her, Obito would make puppy eyes at Rin and ask her to go on a date with him, and she would ruffle his hair and say he was a nice kid. It was a constant, something Kakashi had always taken for granted.

She'd never really had time to recover from the loss of Obito before she'd joined him in death. That had been his fault completely, and he'd never had anyone look him in the eye and tell him it wasn't. Not even Minato-sensei. They always looked at something right over his shoulder while telling him that it had been his inexperience with the Sharingan, and even if that was true, it was hardly an excuse.

Kakashi had used a weapon he didn't understand or fully control, and it had gotten Rin killed. He would never be able to forget the image of her face, slack jawed with surprise, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth as she fell to the ground. He literally could not forget it; the Sharingan had forever burned the image into his mind. The same Sharingan that he'd been so confident in, that had shown him the _correct_ way to dodge...the _correct_ way that had kunai sailing over his shoulder and into Rin's back.

That failure had been a direct result of the first failure. Had he followed Obito, the boy wouldn't have gotten himself crushed, Kakashi wouldn't have received the Sharingan, and he wouldn't have been under its influence when the kunai came at him. He would have blocked, or taken the hits himself, and Rin would still be alive.

Kakashi, oblivious to the world, didn't notice as the long grass began to tickle his feet through the open toes of his zori sandals. He didn't notice the familiar trees encircling him as his feet followed the path he'd worn through the woods. He stopped, body knowing it had reached its destination in front of the imposing black marble slab in the middle of the small clearing.

There had been other deaths in Kakashi's life. His father, Hatake Sakumo, Konoha's White Fang, once revered and feared more than the Legendary Sannin, had committed seppuku after disgracing himself by abandoning his mission to save his friends. If Kakashi thought about it, that was when he'd begun to follow the rules so rigidly. As long as he clung to the rules, he'd thought, he would avoid disgrace, would avoid the hatred of those he'd saved.

Looking back on himself, Kakashi could only shake his head. His father would have been ashamed. That rigid adherence to the rules had led to everything else that had happened - his promotion to jounin, as he continually impressed his superiors, which had made him the leader of the team on the mission where he gained the Sharingan, making him responsible for the death of his teammate. His attitude had gotten him increased attention from his sensei, though in retrospect it was obvious Minato had been trying to change him. Obito's death. His Sharingan. Rin's death...all had stemmed from his reaction to his father's suicide.

If he'd managed to stop his father, change his mind...things would have been different.

The only death that he could take comfort in knowing he _hadn't_ caused was his sensei's. Namikaze Minato had been a true Hokage, and sacrificed himself in order to save the village. Kakashi would do his best to live up to the memory of his sensei.

But...there were so many things he could have done, things that would have kept his friends alive. Reaching out, Kakashi carefully rubbed his thumb over a name on the memorial stone.

**Uchiha Obito**

He wouldn't blame anyone. It hadn't been fate, it hadn't been destiny, or the will of the gods, or any other excuse. Everything that had happened had been Kakashi's fault. He knew it, and would remain silent with his burden. Sometimes the weight felt like it would crush him, but he was strong. He could withstand it, wouldn't crack under the pressure.

His actions had cost his most precious people their lives; the least he could do in their memory was to not forget them. To constantly remind himself that _this_ was what happened when he made mistakes, and to do his absolute best to prevent it from happening in the future.

He knew it would happen again, of course. Gai's flowery accusation of Kakashi's coldness was well founded. Kakashi, unlike Gai, knew that anything he got too close to fell apart. He had a cursed touch, and if denying himself the joy of friends - and the pain of loss - was his price to pay to prevent that cursed touch from reaching out and claiming more lives, he would pay it without a moment's hesitation.

* * *

Bull took another random turn and ended up facing a blank wall. Hours ago, when he'd started navigating this maze of shifting screens, he would have growled low in his throat, cursed under his breath, and stalked off in another direction. But he was tired, frustrated, had a pounding headache, and his throat was dry. 

Running on autopilot, Bull slowly walked through the ever changing labyrinth. It was almost midnight; the majority of the clan had long since gone to sleep. He hadn't had to dodge a member of the Inuzuka in almost an hour. Less people meant less shifting of the screens, which was good, though Bull was still hopelessly lost.

Had he been thinking, he would have brought a soldier pill with him. But no, he was Bull, stubbornly vital. He didn't need little things like food, or at least he'd managed to convince himself of such when he'd been summoned.

When he'd been summoned...Bull winced at the thought. Kakashi would not be pleased. Bull had no chance of getting off by saying he'd chased something to the compound; if anything strange had happened he was supposed to make sure it left before dismissing himself. The sudden halt of the minor chakra flow required to keep him in this plane of existence would alert Kakashi, who would come to the apartment. Standard procedure for a _guard dog_.

Some guard dog he was. He'd been easily distracted, and now that genin - he couldn't recall the name - was on his own.

Then something happened. Something wonderful, something extraordinary, something that broke up Bull's little pity party like Gai broke up real parties.

Bull heard a small humming noise to his right. It sounded electrical, and if the smells coming from that direction were any indication, it was a mini fridge. With _food._

Throwing caution to the wind, Bull hastened his pace in the direction of beloved sustenance. Entering a small room, enclosed with screens on three sides, Bull could catch glimpses of a desk in the dimness of the night. An office? It would explain the mini fridge that was currently drawing him in like a mosquito to a bug zapper - being cooped up in an office for extended periods of time was bad enough, but without something to munch on in between meals it would be sheer torture.

Pawing at the door of the fridge, he managed to get one claw in the crack of the door before prying it open. As the yellow glow of the refrigerator bulb washed over him, Bull imagined a choir of angels singing in the background.

Ham, turkey sandwiches, a salad (blech,) and a half dozen hard boiled eggs met his eyes, along with a dozen plastic bottles of water, but something in the back drew his attention. His breath caught as he stared at the familiar orange packaging and silly cartoon dog on the cover.

_Dog treats._ And they were_chilled_, just the way Bull liked them. Some of the other summons turned their noses up at dog treats, considering them demeaning. Bull loved them though, so it just meant more for him.

Stealth and secrecy were momentarily forgotten as Bull raided the fridge. The only obstacle to eating and drinking his fill had been the water bottles, but he managed to drink those passably well by placing them in his mouth, biting through the plastic, and swallowing the water that trickled out.

After twenty straight minutes of gluttony, Bull began to remember his original purpose for being inside the Inuzuka compound in the middle of the night. Mostly because he'd run out of food. Glancing around at the wrappers and crumbs littering the ground, Bull wondered for a moment what he was going to do with all of the trash. It would be rather obvious that something had happened...

Ah! A trash can! If he threw everything away, and kept the water bottles out of sight on the bottom, no one would be able to tell that it hadn't been a hungry servant or clansmen who had taken the food. Pleased with this idea, Bull set about putting away all the trash, and did a somewhat decent job of sweeping the crumbs behind the fridge with his paws.

Reinvigorated after his meal, Bull poked his head out of the office and tested the air with his nose and ears. Silence, and it appeared as if the maze would be done shifting around for the rest of the night. Bull could only smell traces of humans, nothing newer than an hour old.

Picking up the pace, Bull began to hurry through the screen-littered corridors of the first floor, heading in what he _thought_ was southeast. He was a dog on a mission, and nothing would stop him!**  
**

* * *

Deimos and Kasshoku walked towards the newly established town of Cynopolis in the southwestern portion of the continent. It was a rather beautiful area, composed of gently rolling hills, expansive grasslands, fertile soil that was perfect for farming, and dotted by small forests here and there. 

Inari had sent them here because the town was far from ordinary. Oh, it had shops, some outlying farms, and a place or two to get roaring drunk, but it was the leadership of the town that had drawn Inari's interest.

The town had been taken over by the Gobi no Jakkaru, the Five Tailed Jackal. The humans were more than fine with this; they reportedly viewed the jackals as demigods of a sort, and the Gobi as a god.

Most gods would have been angered at a mere jackal claiming the title of god, but Inari had only been amused. He himself had risen from a simple kitsune to godhood, and it would be quite hypocritical to be angry at someone who appeared to be taking the same path. In fact, Inari had been so impressed with the skillful takeover of human lands by the jackals, and the willful acceptance of this conquest by the humans, that he'd sent Deimos and Kasshoku to the Gobi with a message.

The two had been mildly disappointed at being given mere courier duty; they had been yonbi for almost three centuries, and it had been over a millennia and a half since they'd begun taking missions from Inari! They were more than ready to hunt down a rogue kitsune, go crawling through ruins to find something, or even guard some caravan on its way to a temple. Courier duty was...demeaning, and normally reserved to two tailed foxes. Tie a scroll around their neck and implant the destination in their mind with chakra and they were the most dependable messengers in the world. Cheap, too. Deimos had seen one duck through a war zone to deliver a message to an archer in the rear, dodging stray arrows and risking the anger of the occasional swordsmen, all for a chicken breast.

However, upon arrival, Deimos had been willing to forget for the moment that he was supposed to be more than a courier. The town had wooden walls a half dozen feet thick, and outward-facing spikes had been placed at the base to discourage those thinking to scale the walls, or at least slow them down. A half dozen towers, containing lookouts or potentially archers, dotted the area behind the wall. Pointless, considering the only enemies of any note would be able to use chakra and avoid the defenses, but imposing nonetheless.

The area in front of the wall for almost a mile was covered in land given over to farming, and the few humans the kitsune had seen appeared to be quite content with their lot in life. So the rumors were true; the Gobi really had been accepted by the humans.

Interesting. Normally humans feared the animals that had gained power, that had grown beyond the first tail. They were called demons, and cast out if possible. What had the Gobi done to sway them? The name Cynopolis gave him a small hint, for it was a Greek name. Literally meaning "city of the dogs" it had been a center of worship for the Greek version of Anubis, the jackal-headed god of Egypt. Still...the whole thing was intrigued Deimos. Most held a low opinion of jackals. Deimos himself was not fond of the beasts; they were scavengers of corpses and little more.

The two were stopped at the gate by a rather ugly looking guard. His ears were large, and slightly pointed, and his face looked rather long, almost snout-like. Squinting, Deimos could see that underneath the obvious brown, the eyes were yellow, and that the skin was actually fur and...the man was actually a jackal. Obviously using some sort of illusion to imitate a kitsune shapeshift.

No race besides kitsune could properly change form. The closest anyone else had come was merely what this, and most likely other, jackals had come up with: a dense illusion layered around the real body. It would fool any human, no matter how hard they looked, but a bit of an examination by someone with actual power quickly pierced the illusion, and any break in concentration - such as would be caused by extreme pain - would destroy the illusion.

"Names and reason for visiting," the jackal asked, sounding incredibly bored.

"I'm Deimos, and he's Kasshoku. We're here with a message for the Gobi from Inari," responded Deimos offhandedly. Dropping the name of a major god usually got a reaction.

He didn't get much of one. The guard scratched the back of his neck and yawned. "Center of the town, in the big building. Can't miss it."

Deimos glanced at Kasshoku, who shrugged. Security looked to be lax, despite the walls.

* * *

"Big building," though crude, appeared to be an accurate description. It looked to be part fort, part temple, and part administrative center if the various soldiers, priestly, and scholarly looking people coming in and out in a steady stream were any indication. 

The Gobi, who looked to have been notified that the two were approaching, met them in front of the massive structure with two guards - obviously jackals - flanking him. Deimos raised an eyebrow at the Gobi's appearance: a dark skinned, jackal headed fox. The human like portion of him was perfectly proportioned, and the muscles in his arms were clearly visible, even when at rest. He wore black pants and a black, sleeveless shirt, and a golden ankh dangled by a silver chain around his waist. The leader of the jackals appeared to have made an effort to look as much like Anubis as possible, clothing aside. The Gobi crossed his arms across his chest, obviously preparing to address the kitsune.

_**"Why are you here, servants of Inari?"**_

Deimos' other eyebrow rose to join its companion. So that was how the jackal intended to speak with a muzzle that was clearly not designed for speech. Mental projection; the logical next step up from the mental link Deimos and Kasshoku had created. Even as he tried to remember exactly who had first copied the technique from them, he made a mental note to remember the thought projection trick. The booming voice echoing throughout one's mind with no apparent movement from the speaker could be considered intimidating.

"We are here with a message from Inari," responded Kasshoku, slipping into his role in courier missions. He spoke; Deimos remained silent and listened and studied the one receiving the message. Kasshoku was less likely to say something brash, and Deimos was the one who was best at putting seemingly unrelated events together to form a coherent picture.

_**"The Gobi shall hear it."**_

Deimos almost snorted at the jackal referring to himself in third person, and with his title instead of his name. It was certainly arrogant, considering the way the Gobi appeared to be flaunting the fact that he was the only one in the history of his race to rise above the fourth tail. He'd even phrased his response as if he was doing Inari a favor by listening to a message from the god!

"Inari conveys his respect and congratulations at your success in uniting your race and ruling over such a large territory," Kasshoku began. There had been no entire message given to the kitsune, more of a general sense of what to say, so he was making some of this up as he went along.

_**"It is noted."**_

"However, he has also noticed that you have closed your borders to most foreigners. Inari requests that you allow him to send in his priests and receive worship, as is his due, and as the rulers of the other lands have done."

That was the dicey part. The Gobi appeared to have set himself up as a god, and Inari _requesting__permission_ to send in his followers would probably appear to the Gobi as an action of a weakling, or a poor attempt at concealing an invasion. Far from it; Inari was respectful of the Gobi's accomplishments, and had decided to treat the jackal with a rare level of honor and fair dealing.

The Gobi's guards twitched, then froze when the Gobi turned and looked each of them in the eye. From the length of the look, he appeared to be having a one-sided mental conversation with the two. Another point in favor of mental projection - focus it and no one can overhear your conversation. He really was going to have to learn how to do that. After the jackals had given bows of acknowledgment and left, the Gobi turned his attention back to the kitsune.

_**"I shall consider this request. Leave; My own messengers will bring a response."**_

The Gobi turned abruptly and walked back into the fort-like construction in the center of the town, the kitsune already forgotten. Deimos and Kasshoku turned surprised looks on each other. Being dismissed as if the two were no more important than the lowest of underlings was a new experience. After word of the incident in Ehime had spread, the world had come to respect and fear Inari and his messengers. The event had occurred so long ago that it had passed into myth and legend, but it was still told to children as an accurate account of those who defied the gods.

Kasshoku shrugged. "We gave him the message."

Deimos shot a scowl in the direction the Gobi had left in. "Whatever. Let's get out of here...remind me to never take courier duty again."

His only answer was a nod, and the two turned, walking in the direction they'd come. Three days of walking through the forest for ten minutes inside a town to talk with a surly, arrogant leader of an upstart bunch of jackals.

Well, at least he'd have plenty of opportunities to ask Kasshoku questions with no logical answer...which sounded like fun. Turning, he opened his mouth to begin an endless round of impossible questions and paradoxes, time travel at the front of his thoughts.

"No. I recognize that look. Just...no," Kasshoku said before he could get out one syllable.

Damn. There were occasional downsides to traveling with someone who'd known you for almost two millennia.

* * *

The two kitsune, still in human form, were a day from reaching the edge of the jackals' territory. They hadn't really been paying attention to where they were going, as they were in no hurry. The burden of carrying a response from the Gobi was not theirs to carry. As such, their somewhat aimless meandering had led them through a massive gorge. Deimos had been mildly interested, taking time to stop and stare at various strange formations of rock. Kasshoku, on the other hand, was focusing on the fact that it was _cold_ down here. The sun hardly ever reached down into the bottom of the gorge, and everything was damp from the lack of heat and the small river running through the area. 

Leaning against the base of a tree that slanted dangerously over a drop in the river bank, Kasshoku tried to tune out Deimos' ramblings about the natural rock arch the tree was leaning towards. Not that he wasn't interested - he just didn't think Deimos needed to know that. Apparently, from what Deimos could see, the rock arch appeared to have been formed by the river eating away at weaker, underlying portions of the rock, leaving a somewhat odd-looking, small natural bridge over the river. Not that any bridge was needed; it was fall, and the river running quite low if the water marks on the dirt of the bank were anything to go by. Must be a drought in this part of the world.

The monologue abruptly cut off, and Kasshoku opened his eyes to look questioningly at Deimos, whose brows were furrowed as he tilted his head to the sky, sniffing, testing the air.

"Trouble," he growled. Kasshoku took a moment to gauge the seriousness of Deimos' face before wordlessly standing up and moving to stand at the orange kitsune's side, the dozen foot drop to the river behind him. Not much of a deterrent, but they would certainly hear anything before it managed to climb the small cliff.

A moment later a man walked out of the brush. Grinning in a fashion that did nothing to reassure the two foxes he said, "That's my name. You called?"

Carefully examining him, Kasshoku could tell that the man was no man. He could see the yellow eyes through the thin illusion, the fanged teeth and claws. It was a jackal, using the same illusion as the ones in Cynopolis.

One jackal was no threat, but from the snickers Kasshoku could hear, there was more than one. A second brushed the foliage aside, revealing itself. A third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, until there were fourteen.

"Why are you here?" Kasshoku asked, knowing that Deimos would be scanning them for any weaknesses. None of them felt like they were beyond sanbi, but even three tails could pose a threat if they attacked while the two were unprepared. A hand sign that he felt more than heard confirmed the feeling. Fourteen sanbi against two yonbi...this could be..._fun_.

The jackal who called himself Trouble began to snicker before breaking into outright cackling laughter. "We're...the mess...the messengers...fro...from Gobi!" he jackal answered in between bursts of maniacal laughter.

There was silence, and Kasshoku could feel an almost morbid curiosity forcing him to ask the next question.

"What is your message?"

The laughter stopped abruptly, and the jackals tensed. Trouble's yellow eyes glinted as he revealed long, sharp teeth in a feral grin.

Raising his arms in a shrug, slightly clawed hands in the air, Trouble responded, "The Gobi has most graciously pondered the request of his divine compatriot, Inari. However, the Gobi is disinclined to acquiesce to Inari's request." Still grinning, he brought his hands down and cupped them around his mouth before whispering loudly, "Means no."

Kasshoku knew where this was going, but there was no use hastening the conversation to its end. "Inari will be disappointed to hear of this. If that is all, the two of us will be on our way to let him know of the Gobi's answer."

Trouble coughed in the back of his throat. "That's not necessary; we plan on delivering the message ourselves."

Trying to be reasonable, Kasshoku responded, "We're headed to Inari anyway. I'm sure we could tell him better than you could. No offense, but you don't know Inari very well."

"I'm sure your corpses will be a clear enough message."

There it was - the declaration of intent. Now Inari couldn't blame them for picking a fight.

Chaos erupted. The jackals, after a few moments of effort, dispelled their illusion of a human form while the kitsune remained motionless, prepared to resume their natural forms in an instant. Theirs was a true shapeshift, and it had always been a kitsune art. They needed no more than an instant of concentration to resume their natural forms.

Deimos had been right; they _were_ all sanbi. The jackals began to slowly pace in an arc in front of the two foxes, yellow eyes trained on the kitsune, searching for a moment of weakness.

Kasshoku took a moment to count them all, a task made only slightly difficult by the fact that they kept passing by each other in small knots of fur and tails designed to draw the eye and confuse the watcher. Fourteen to two. Seven jackals for each of them, though Kasshoku was confident he could take at least eight. Deimos would have to hunt for the next week if Kasshoku won this little battle.

Betting on who did better in a fight was far from new to the two kitsune. Over the centuries the life and death struggles had become just another contest, one among many. Deimos was currently in the lead, and took every opportunity to remind Kasshoku of the fact.

"Fourteen of them, two of us. So, nine for me, five for you?" Deimos teased, eyes never leaving the circling jackals.

Kasshoku growled threateningly, though he knew Deimos had no trouble detecting the glint of excitement in his eyes. Deimos had always said that something about a fight just brought out the kitsune in Kasshoku. An odd way to phrase it, but Deimos said he had never seen his friend be more cunning, devious, and trickster like than during a battle for his life. Kasshoku had never even attempted to deny enjoying it.

"Don't be congratulating yourself just yet, Deimos. _You're_ going to be the one spending the next week hunting while _I_ laze about."

To the untrained observer, the conversation appeared to be mere bravado. The kitsune were outnumbered, had been caught unprepared, and despite being more than a match for any of the jackals individually, they were facing seven to one odds. The reality of the conversation was that it was a form of subconscious communication between the two lifelong friends. Those who truly knew each other could have conversations that had nothing to do with what they were talking about.

A jackal feinted forwards, and the two kitsune swapped attention from each other to the three tailed beast. It wisely backed off, though not without a small snicker, before continuing to circle the kitsune.

"I want to up the wager," Deimos said, eyes flicking to random jackals, making sure they kept their distance. Translation: _I don't want to die._

"If this is about one of those damn logic puzzles, I'll answer _one_ after we kill these idiots." _We're not going to die._

Deimos face softened into a small, relieved smile. "Winner gets to claim one favor from the loser after we get back to Inari's territory." _You're right. We're going to live._

Kasshoku grinned at the jackals, sensing Deimos' reaction. "Deal."_Of course I'm right._

Deimos flicked a hand in the direction of one of the jackals, and it backed off, wary of a potential chakra attack. The jackals weren't entirely stupid; they knew their opponents were Yonbi, an entirely different level from themselves. Their advantage would lay in a lightning strike and numbers.

"Hope you enjoy trying to steal Inari's whiskers, Kasshoku," he said, sounding bored, as if the entire fight was a foregone conclusion.

"I'll enjoy watching you be _silent_ for the next month."

"The ugly one is mine," Deimos responded.

Kasshoku took a moment to ponder this statement. Turning to Deimos he said, "That's _all_ of them."

A foxy grin was his answer. "Indeed."

"Pffft. You can't have all of them! I'll take the ones on the left, you take the ones on the right. The talkative one counts for two." _Up onto the arch and then split. I go right, you go left. Trouble counts for two; no ties._

"Sounds good. They really should have planned this ambush a little better you know? Attacked before we knew they were there." _Sounds good. There aren't any more that we're missing, are there?_

"What can you expect from idiot jackals?" _This is all of them._

The orange kitsune's response was lost as the jackals, finally succumbing to the taunts and believing the two kitsune distracted, charged.

Before the jackals had taken more than three steps, the kitsune had assumed their natural form, resplendent in their four tailed glory. For reasons they weren't entirely sure of, their tails had grown longer every time they gained a new one, and the furry appendages were now just as long as their entire bodies, which had also grown when they'd attained the fourth tail. The two were now the size of small bulls, though they had lost none of their agility.

Instead of meeting the charge, each kitsune taking half of the jackals as they'd said they would, the two turned and bounded up the crooked tree Kasshoku had been leaning against before the jackals had shown up. It began to lean forward ominously under the sudden, massive increase in weight, but the two kitsune only needed to be on the tree for a moment. A half dozen yard leap later, the two were on top of the stone arch. The action had momentarily slowed the jackals while they tried to figure out the best way to get to the stone arch. Finally Trouble's voice rose above the crowd.

"By age; youngest first!"

Among humans, the order would only have created more confusion as they looked at each other, confused, wondering who was how old. Amongst the tailed beasts, who lived for centuries, age was a symbol of status, of power. The jackals would all know each other's relative ages. The youngest would be used as cannon fodder, testing the kitsunes' defenses before the older, probably smarter, jackals attacked.

The younger jackals, not exactly liking this plan, hesitated a moment before racing up the tree and leaping towards the arch, echoing the kitsunes' movements. Deimos and Kasshoku scattered, Deimos to the left and Kasshoku to the right. The first two jackals landed without incident, but the third fell prey to a weak illusion of Kasshoku's, and landed head first against the stone of the arch. Kasshoku, still sprinting from his pursuer, could hear a dull crack indicating that the jackal had broken something. Probably an important something.

But then he had no time for paying attention to the fallen beast, as a total of six jackals had joined in the chase against him. He was bigger, and just a little bit faster, but they could spread out. He wouldn't be losing them by doubling back on his trail.

A quick glance over his shoulder confirmed the guess. The jackals had begun to spread out into a fan-like shape, and though they weren't getting any closer, Kasshoku wasn't putting any significant amount of distance between them.

Abruptly turning to the right, Kasshoku managed to make it to the edge of the river, just barely managing to avoid the jackal on the far most edge. The thing was far too close for comfort though. Picking up his pace, Kasshoku managed to put another dozen yards between him and the jackal before abruptly stopping, all four tails leveled at the thing like a cannon. The tips began to glow with a brilliant white light.

The jackal, sensing its impending destruction, jumped to the side, throwing up a hasty shield of chakra that would hopefully blunt the imminent, catastrophic attack and closed its eyes against the brightness, knowing the shield wouldn't be enough.

The attack never came. Kasshoku resumed his flight, feet pounding against the side of the river, and by the time the jackal had realized it had been fooled, Kasshoku had turned back into the forest, out of its line of sight.

Jumping up onto a low-hanging branch, Kasshoku grinned to himself as he ran straight up the tree, speed and momentum bringing him up a good thirty feet before he jumped off onto another branch. The branch dipped dangerously, and Kasshoku knew he could go no higher, not without risking a fall. The branches just wouldn't support his weight.

That didn't matter though. He had a highway in the sky, and the jackals didn't have anything more than a general idea of where he was. If he was smart, this would be the part where he hopped from tree to tree all the way to kitsune territory. But then he'd have to hunt for the next week and listen to Deimos ribbing him all the while. Besides, what kind of friend would he be if he left Deimos to deal with this pack of idiots all by himself?

Grin widening, Kasshoku watched as the half dozen jackals that had been pursuing him passed harmlessly beneath him. Suckers. Most people won't look up unless forced to, and these jackals were no exception to that rule. Kasshoku had only done what any good "prey" would have, and removed himself from the area the "predators" would be passing through.

Of course, now he could throw out the book on prey behavior. He was the predator now. The jackals just hadn't figured it out yet.

* * *

Deimos would have smiled and patted himself on the back for his brilliance, but said brilliance had prevented any such movement. Being a half-grown evergreen tree at the base of a large cliff impeded quite a few normal motor functions. 

Two jackals paused in front of the tree, noses to the ground, trying to catch a hint of his trail. They wouldn't find anything - they would just end up coming back to the innocuous little tree, time and again. Maybe, _maybe_, they would figure it out eventually, but Deimos was doubtful. It had taken Kasshoku an entire day to see through Deimos' trick when he first did this.

A third jackal walked up from Deimos' left. Wait, _was_ it to his left? He didn't exactly have a front or back or sides any more. He couldn't even see; trees didn't have eyes. He'd spent years just figuring out how to do this and keep his brain intact, and adding visual senses would probably screw the entire thing over. Still, he could detect motion fairly well with the shallow system of roots that had replaced his limbs and tails.

The jackals began to grunt and bark. Deimos could feel the sound vibrations echoing off the short, needle-like "leaves" of his evergreen tree form. Truth be told, they weren't normal leaves. The leaves were especially sensitive to vibration - such as sound - and he could "hear" what the jackals were saying. It was a bit different from normal hearing, but for now it was fine.

Jackals and kitsune, being distantly related, had a similar form of language, so Deimos could get the gist of what they were saying. True, none of the tailed beasts had ever bothered to come up with an entire language for use in their natural forms, preferring to just borrow the human language, but they all grew up with the same basic language as any other stupid animal. It was just fine for short conversations or instructions, but would fail utterly in an attempt to describe a sunset.

The vibrations of footsteps and breathing centered in the direction Deimos thought of as "forwards." Whether he had a front or a back at this point was moot; he still unconsciously made the reference points.

A deep growl came from the latest arrival, who sounded like some sort of leader. The foot vibrations were off for it to be Trouble, as he was slightly larger, but nonetheless Deimos got a sense of command from it. _Where?_

There was a pause, followed by a series of short grunts ending in a bark._Don't know. Lost trail._

The leader yipped twice derisively, short and sharp. _Idiots._

The third jackal, who had remained silent until this point, let out a deep, booming bark, demanding attention. Perhaps Deimos had been wrong - if the tone was anything to go by, _that_ was the leader. Using a deep voice against one higher in the pack than oneself usually resulted in an instant demand for submission. Deep voices indicate size, which indicates power. All beings instinctively react to that basic tonal change, and no pack creature was stupid enough to not recognize it as a challenge, a claim of authority.

It sniffed the air loudly, indicating tracking, before circling a few times, ending up standing in front of the tree. _Trail disappears here._

The jackal turned back to other two and began a long series of whines and growls, explaining what he and his partner had been doing, and how they'd lost the amazingly skilled kitsune. Well, actually, Deimos thought he heard "mongrel prey" but he was sure it was an error in translation on his part.

The conversation kept going, and after a few minutes Deimos knew that it couldn't end well. The leader just might have a brain in his skull that would put two and two together and get four. A rare occurrence, but the odds still weren't worth risking his life over. He'd hidden long enough anyway.

Slowly, quietly, carefully spreading chakra throughout every part of the tree, Deimos prepared to resume his natural form. He had something special planned. Technically, any part of the tree could become any part of himself, although it would be easiest to have the main body of the tree become his body, and have the roots become limbs and tails. Easiest simply wouldn't do.

Deimos built up the bulk of his chakra in the shallow root system that was behind the two jackals standing closest to each other, a mere three feet apart. The conversation ending was his queue; shoving the rest of his chakra into the roots Deimos gave a sharp mental twist, and suddenly he was a tree no more.

It must have been quite a surprise for the two nearest jackals, as the yonbi kitsune they hadn't been able to find abruptly appeared out of the ground behind them. The surprise was short-lived, as were the jackals, as Deimos immediately leapt forward, splaying his legs and landing with his left legs on one jackal's back, his right forelimb on the other jackal's head, and his back right leg scoring a deep gash into its side as he misjudged the leap to its back.

A hard squeeze from the claws in his front right leg sent one into the jackal's eyes, squelching bloodily even as he heard the others score jagged furrows through its scalp. At the same time he twisted his body, raking through flesh, muscle, and finally digging into bone. He abruptly jumped with all four legs, somewhat lopsidedly due to his back right leg being on a different level than the rest of his legs, but the sudden pressure on the skull of one jackal and the spine of the other had the desired effect: shattering them as they took the entire weight of the massive fox.

The two jackals fell to the ground, one a ruined, nearly headless corpse, the other a mass of quivering flesh as it slowly died, completely paralyzed, blood gushing from a dozen deep lacerations.

Landing heavily, Deimos bent his knees to absorb some of the impact, not bothering to do anything to halt his backwards slide away from the third jackal. He was too busy focusing chakra to his tails, calling up images of an unquenchable thirst, of the raging heat of the sun, the unrelenting burn of a wildfire.

A burst of concentrated flame shot out of Deimos' far right tail, going a mere foot wide to the right of the jackal. All as planned.

The jackal, wary of the chakra attack, immediately leapt to its right, seeking to avoid the flames. Its eyes widened briefly as it felt the heat of the flames, or more accurately, the lack thereof. The flame had been bright, but just for show. All Deimos had really needed was the jackal's timing to be off for a second. It would be all he needed.

The other three tails converged into a single point aimed at the lone surviving jackal. It was still in the air, and Deimos could see it twist in the air, seeking to turn and run through the area the past flame had just vacated, but it was too late. To Deimos' eyes, the jackal was standing still. A concentrated ball of blue flame with a core of blinding white erupted from the point where the tips of his tails met.

The flame seared across the air separating Deimos from the nameless jackal in an instant, crashing into the jackal at the moment it landed from its initial dodge, eyes still not finished widening in fear. The fireball struck it in the chest and...splattered, scattering across the jackal's upper body. The chakra based flames, devoid of a controlling influence from their creator, surged uncontrolled over the jackal's flesh, seemingly sentient in their mindless quest to keep burning, to get to more chakra to fuel the supernatural heat of their flames.

The fire, centered around the beast's torso, burned through fur, flesh, muscle and bone in quick succession before entering its chest cavity. The scream of pain ended as abruptly as it had begun as the jackal's lungs ceased to exist, followed soon after by its heart. The only sound in the forest was the crackling of flames as some of the brush, long deprived of water, caught fire from Deimos' weaker, untargeted flame. The flames on the jackal died soon after the jackal itself, losing their source of chakra. The scent of charred flesh and hair drifted over to Deimos' sensitive nose, and he wrinkled it in disgust.

Flames of chakra that consumed the chakra of whatever they touched to keep burning had been a brilliant idea, and he would be the first to say it. It still took a ton of chakra and wouldn't work on anything with chakra levels higher than his - the flames used flesh and chakra as fuel, and too much chakra could be likened to a gust of wind blowing out a candle. The fireball also resulted in an acrid smell that was somehow infinitely worse than a normal fire. The smell of the involuntary bowel release from the three corpses wasn't helping either, but that would happen no matter how he killed them.

_'There were at least two more following me,'_ he thought to himself. _'There's no way they missed the fire, and that last jackal screamed pretty loudly. Either they show up within a few minutes to see what's going on or they tuck their tails between their legs and run back to the Gobi. Doubt they'll go to the Gobi...he doesn't seem like the forgiving type. Now, where to camouflage myself? That fire is spreading, so I don't think a tree would be a good idea.'_

The sound of a howl in the distance broke his train of thought. Another howl, closer. They were coming, and he was still recovering from the chakra flame. He could probably pull out another flame or two if he had to, but it would take his reserves down to almost nothing. He needed some place to hide! But the flames were everywhere, and he couldn't transform into a fire; he would burn himself to nothing. it would be suicide.

Another howl, this one feeling almost close enough to touch. They were almost here! He had nowhere to hide - and was low on chakra.

A few seconds later, two jackals walked into the burning section of the forest, the epicenter of the spreading forest fire. Their eyes went to Deimos, and the first one barked a laugh at his weakened state. Slowly, the two stalked up to him.

* * *

Kasshoku watched from a distance as the two jackals finished killing each other, convinced that their enemy was the brown kitsune. He'd already pulled this trick with the other four, easily dispatching all of his pursuers. Only one had managed to break free of the illusion, and he had spent the last few moments of his life trying to convince his fellow jackal that he wasn't a fox. Without success. Kasshoku was somewhat disappointed that it had been so...easy. 

Now, how to find Deimos? The entire forest smelled of smoke and ash - probably Deimos' work - so he couldn't track him by scent. Flaring his chakra when he still didn't know if all the jackals were dead or not was an idea that could only be called suicidal, and they hadn't agreed on a meeting spot.

A path to the lip of gorge caught his eye. Somewhere along the line, he'd gotten up out of the gorge, and was now near the cliff edge. Deimos was probably still down in the gorge, and had in all likelihood started the fire. If he could get a good view of the fire from above, maybe he could figure out where it had started. Deimos was sure to be somewhere around the epicenter of the flames.

Passing between a thick cluster of trees, Kasshoku came to a small crack in the cliff wall that separated the precipice he'd been heading for. Glancing down, he saw that it went almost all the way to the base of the gorge. How the hell did this massive pillar of rock stay up if it wasn't connected to the cliff wall? Dragging his attention away from the geologic anomaly, Kasshoku stepped carefully over the crack in the ground.

Another few yards and he was rewarded with an amazing view of the smoking gorge. The section of cliff he was on jutted out sharply into the gorge, giving him an unparalleled view. Turning back to look at the part where this section joined the rest of the cliff, Kasshoku's eyes were drawn to the crack. He had a sudden image of this place - he knew where he was! It was that outcropping of rock they'd seen the day before that looked like nothing so much as a chimney connected to the side of a house. Deimos hadn't offered any likely methods for its formation, instead opting to just stare up at the enormous thing, sharing the moment of awe with Kasshoku in silence.

Turning his focus back to the gorge, Kasshoku squinted, trying to get a good look through the smoke that had enveloped the area. A shame, that - the forest had been scenic and peaceful. It was bound to happen sooner or later though; most of the forest had been dry as a tinder box. Eventually some spark would kindle, and the entire place would have gone up in smoke...but the battle of the kitsune had hastened that end.

For all the smoke that was cloaking the sky, the actual fire was surprisingly small. It seemed to be spreading in several directions all at once, the near dead quality of the wind preventing the fire from being confined to one general area while at the same time keeping it from spreading too rapidly. Cocking his head to the side in an attempt to gain a new perspective, Kasshoku could see that the slowly spreading flames formed a semi-circular arc.

An arc that centered around...him? But the fire was down in the gorge, not up on the cliff. Which meant...

Grabbing onto two different trees with his tails, Kasshoku leaned out over the edge, which sloped downwards for a few feet before ending in a nearly vertical drop to the bottom of the gorge. Safety first - he would never hear the end of it if he walked himself off of a cliff after defeating chakra wielding jackals. He could see a massive area of ruined landscape, even more than the fire could account for, and a few small shapes that could have been jackals.

Closing his eyes and calling up his concentration, Kasshoku carefully transformed his eyes to those of an eagle. He knew his own body instinctively, and would automatically return to his natural form when he cancelled the transformation. They weren't permanent shifts of the body after all, merely temporary changes of the physical structure...sometimes to an extreme level, but always temporary. Still, it was always wise to be careful when messing with anything that close to his brain. He was still fairly certain Deimos had permanently damaged something by turning into a tree. How he did anything with literally no brain was something of a mystery. Deimos, as usual, had some nonsensical theory about it, which came down to something about the soul storing memories, and chakra keeping the soul inside the new form. Kasshoku hadn't really been paying attention.

With the newer, distance-capable eyes, Kasshoku could clearly see the bottom of the cliff, oh so far away. The kitsune-sized hole in the ground, and the jackal corpse next to it, were obviously from Deimos' tree trick. A few other jackal corpses were scattered about, each having apparently died in inventive, quick methods. Typical Deimos. But most clearly of all, Kasshoku could see the orange corpse, the four tails covered in blood, three bent at angles impossible even for a flexible kitsune tail.

A single jackal remained in the clearing, panting heavily, a cut running across its right eye, blood oozing out of the ruined socket. Deimos hadn't died easily.

Only the fact that the drop was almost a thousand feet prevented Kasshoku from letting go of the trees and hurtling down at the beast like a thunderbolt from the hand of an angry god. Hot, suicidal rage at the death of his friend would accomplish nothing.

Another two jackals walked through the clearing, ash and soot coating their fur. They ignored the flames. Beings such as jackals and kitsune had long since become accustomed to incredibly high levels of energy, and when you got right down to it, that was all heat was: energy. Kasshoku doubted he would be more than mildly uncomfortable unless he decided to actually walk into the flames. Chakra based flames, on the other hand, were a different matter entirely. They were to natural fires what kitsune were to normal foxes: they looked a bit like each other, but one was power incarnate, the other...not so much.

The two jackals walked up to the third, and from the movement of their mouths were asking him what happened. The wounded, one eyed jackal kept panting, merely gesturing with its head in the direction of Deimos' corpse. The two jackals snorted, turning their backs on their injured comrade to investigate the corpse. The wounded jackal scowled before rising to its feet slowly, padding after the other two jackals.

Something about the way he walked was...off. The front legs...bent strangely, for a jackal. And the posture was unusual for a wounded member of the pack that had probably just lost large amounts of standing along with its eye. No, the jackal stood proudly, his chest rising and falling incredibly quickly, as if barely restraining laughter at some joke only he could see. His tails twitched with restrained motion, like they couldn't wait to burst into action.

The jackal...moved like Deimos.

* * *

Two jackals walked into the burning section of the forest, the epicenter of the spreading forest fire. Their eyes went to Deimos, and the first one barked a laugh at his weakened state. Slowly, the two stalked up to him. 

A growl. _What happened?_

Deimos panted, taking a moment before responding wordlessly. He didn't trust his voice right now, opting instead to gesture at the corpse at the opposite end of the clearing.

One of the jackals turned its head, and lost all interest in Deimos to investigate the corpse. Slapping the other's haunch with a tail to get his attention, the two left the apparently exhausted form of Deimos to lie beneath the tree, attention on anything but him.

Deimos' mouth opened slightly in a kitsune grin, bared teeth glinting in the light of the flames as he rose and walked towards the two jackals. He paused a moment, inhaling deeply of the scent of smoke and flame, an expression of rapture crossing his features. He'd always been a creature of flame - and flame's ally, the wind. A small fire became a blazing inferno if one applied the proper amount of wind to spur things along.

Opening his eyes, Deimos' had to work to restrain his laughter as the two jackals investigated "his corpse." Fools couldn't even recognize one of their own under an illusion, and his skill with the art was far below that of Kasshoku. They should have been able to figure it out; the corpse was a wee bit small for a yonbi kitsune, despite being the biggest of the three jackals he'd taken out.

Ah well, now they'd never figure it out. The two didn't even look up as he walked between them, too busy barking and growling about who was going to take the blame for the deaths of so many jackals.

Transforming just his tails back to normal, Deimos answered the question with a deep bark. _I will._ Before they could react to the odd declaration, he thwapped them over the head with two tails each. Momentarily stunned, the two never knew what hit them. Pure chakra surged through his tail and into the dazed jackals' skulls in an unstoppable torrent. The abrupt, sharp increase in chakra overloaded the unprepared chakra coils as it flooded through small channels, unwidened in preparation of a technique. The chakra kept surging along the chakra coils until it hit a tenketsu, a regulatory point on the chakra system. If one were to compare the chakra system to the network of veins and arteries in the body, the tenketsu would be valves.

Valves are designed to prevent a backflow of blood, and tenketsu are designed to prevent a backflow or overflow of chakra by preventing the flow from going in an improper direction. This prevents overflow, as the chakra cannot spread to the rest of the system, and the coils naturally widen and slowly disperse it naturally, or quickly if the chakra is being used in a technique. This is why chakra can be channeled to a specific area of the body - one merely concentrates on keeping the tenketsu from letting chakra leave that area of the body. Unfortunately, this system is not designed to handle an influx of chakra from an outside source, considering it a backflow and attempting to halt it by closing off the tenketsu.

The tenketsu are highly durable, and only extreme precision or extreme force can affect them. Deimos had both on his side - he had placed extreme force into the skulls of the jackals with extreme precision: just enough to not break the tenketsu. But the flood continued. With the chakra unable to burst through the tenketsu and the chakra coils failing to disperse the massive influx quickly enough, something was bound to give.

The only flaw in tenketsu is that they are highly durable. The only part of the chakra system that is more durable is the Eight Celestial Gates, meaning that tenketsu are stronger than chakra coils, which normally handle excess chakra by stretching elastically. Typically if the pressure is too much for the coil, it is too much for the tenketsu, bursting the tenketsu and diffusing the chakra over a wider area. This spreads the damage, but prevents a fatal overflow in a single area.

However, the chakra Deimos was flooding the jackals' skulls with was perfectly balanced to exploit the flaw in this system: it was surging in too quickly for the coils to expand and keep it contained, but there wasn't enough force behind it to break a tenketsu.

The coils in the jackals' skulls burst, flooding their brains with not only their own chakra, but the continuously rising tide of Deimos' chakra. Chakra is energy, and energy is motion, which translates into heat. Without the coil system to regulate and limit the motion, the chakra exploded into a frenzy of movement, resulting in one thing: heat. The jackals' brains were, quite literally, beaten into a batter by the sudden movement and fried inside their own skulls.

Gasping, Deimos released the jackal transformation. That had been a chancy thing; he hadn't been in the form long enough to smell like a jackal, so they could have detected them if they'd been careful enough. Thankfully the soot and ash of the fire had masked his scent, for the most part.

He hadn't even had to burn much chakra; the genjutsu on the corpse was fairly weak, transformation was almost as easy as breathing, and the "chakra flood" killing method was incredibly efficient. It was incredibly hard to use in anything but an ambush though, because the chakra coils would already be expanded in preparation of the rush of chakra from a technique and because it required extreme precision. Still, as a surprise attack it was hard to beat.

Now...he'd killed five jackals, and he'd seen six go after Kasshoku, seven counting that one that had broken its neck trying to jump onto the stone arch, meaning there were two left. Closing his eyes, Deimos tried to feel for chakra signatures. Now that so much of the forest's ambient chakra was gone, seeing as large portions of it were dying, he could get a clearer sense of what was where.

The first thing of any significance that he could detect was a decent sized chakra concentration to his left and about a mile distant. Not quite at Kasshoku's normal level, but they had been in a fight for their lives. Best to be cautious though. Continuing his mental search for more chakra signatures, Deimos felt two presences...above him?

It must be the jackals; Kasshoku would hardly be sticking around one of the damned scavengers. The chakra didn't feel agitated; it was at rest, so there was no fighting going on.

Turning to glare up at the jackal who was probably looking down at Deimos, studying his movements, Deimos snorted in amusement. Squinting to get a better view of the figure, his eyes caught on four separate brown little blurs, all that he could make out of Kasshoku's tails at this distance. His heart clenched.

If that was Kasshoku...then the other thing he'd sensed must have been a jackal. And it was practically on top of Kasshoku.

Throwing caution to the wind, he took a deep breath and barked as loudly as he could. The sound echoed on the stone walls of the gorge. _ENEMY. BEHIND!_

For a moment, Kasshoku didn't move, and Deimos feared he hadn't caught the warning. Then Kasshoku turned quickly, and Deimos lost sight of his friend for a moment before feeling him burst into action.

* * *

Kasshoku snorted, amused, and shook his head. He was going to have a little conversation with Deimos when all this was over. Idiot had scared the hell out of him. Or maybe he wouldn't have that conversation...Deimos would be sure to rub it in that Kasshoku had been not only tricked, but mournful over the perceived loss of his friend. 

Not that he didn't care about the orange kitsune, but he'd never said such in as many words. Deimos should know by now that they were practically brothers; Kasshoku had trouble remembering anything before he'd met Deimos.

When Deimos turned to look up at Kasshoku, clearly glaring at his spectator, Kasshoku opened his mouth, teeth bared in a mocking grin. It was a shame that Deimos couldn't see it. Then he saw the look of panic on Deimos' face, the inhalation and quickly screamed bark of warning.

_ENEMY. BEHIND!_

What was Deimos talking about? He'd taken out all of the jackals pursuing him.

A dry leaf behind him crunched.

Confusion disappearing in the face of instinct, Kasshoku pulled back with his tails, dragging himself away from the cliff before releasing the trees and turning. He was just in time; the jackal that had been in the process of leaping at him soared mere inches to his side. Had he not turned, it would have tackled him head on.

Three tails wrapped around his back legs.

The jackal landed on the downwards slope at the edge of the cliff, skidded for a moment, dragging Kasshoku along with him. The jackal hit a bump in the slope and was launched a few feet into the air. The abrupt cessation of the pull on Kasshoku barely gave him time to dig his front claws into the ground before the jackal fell prey to gravity's sovereign force.

The jackal, tails still wrapped around Kasshoku's hind legs, gave a sudden, massive jerk as he reached the end of the slack provided by his long tails.

It was too much; Kasshoku hadn't had enough time to get a grip. His claws, mere inches into the ground, were wrenched free as he tumbled down the slope of the cliff, following the jackal towards the thousand foot drop.

As he sailed into the air, wind literally whistling past him as he hurtled towards a rocky death, Kasshoku's mind went blank. His life didn't flash before his eyes, though it had been a good one, as kitsune lives went. He'd had a constant friend and ally, more than most of his kind could say. His only regret was that he'd never told Deimos that he was the greatest brother Kasshoku could have ever asked for.

The jackal hit the ground and Kasshoku had a tiny sliver of a second to hear the crunch as it impacted the dirt before landing on its pulped, ruined corpse, the world exploding into burning red and white before being instantly enveloped in cool darkness. He hadn't even had time to fully comprehend the pain.

* * *

Deimos' eyes widened in horror when he saw the jackal go over the cliff, dragging Kasshoku with it. The world seemed to slow down, the air thicken into an impenetrable mass as he tried to get...his...damned...body...to..._**MOVE!**_

It was to no avail. He could see Kasshoku falling, but there was no way he could get there in time. He wasn't sure what he needed to get there in time for, but he e couldn't move fast enough to do it. That heroic, last second save was prevented because he was slow. Because he wasn't good enough with chakra - despite his talent for wind manipulation there was nothing he could do to slow the fall, even if he'd been at full strength.

The two bodies hit the ash-covered dirt of the charred forest floor at nearly the same time with a sickening, wet splattering noise that Deimos couldn't hear over his own howl of denial.

Deimos didn't remember scrambling over the ash, natural grace abandoning him as he raced to his friend. He couldn't feel Kasshoku's chakra any more. He didn't know what he expected; a part of him was convinced that Kasshoku would stand up and shake the gore off before acting offended that Deimos had thought such a minor fall would hurt at all, despite every logical part of his brain grieving, _knowing_ Kasshoku was gone.

That small, hopeful part of his mind shriveled and died when he reached the...corpse. He couldn't deny it any longer; blood covered everything he could see, Kasshoku's rib cage had caved in and he could see white and grey through the blood-matted fur of the other kitsune's head.

He reached out tentatively with a paw, as if his touch could revive his friend, his...brother. He paused, mere millimeters from touching that fur, that fur that had so recently moved and thrummed with life. He snatched the paw back, swallowing against the knot in his throat.

Throwing his head back, Deimos keened his sorrow to the dying forest and faceless cliff walls. The haunting, eerily high pitch reverberated throughout the gorge, echoes only enhancing the pain that could be felt as much as heard.

After a momentary eternity where the world faded away, leaving him to his solitude in the middle of the raging inferno of the forest and of his sorrow, Deimos' throat clenched up again, and he could continue no more. Turning mournful eyes down to Kasshoku, Deimos could only stare. He knew he should be doing something, something that had used to seem important. But he just couldn't find the will to move, felt like the only thing he wanted was to stand there until he became stone, standing constant vigil over his brother.

He could feel the lone remaining chakra signature close by, a mere few hundred feet away. The jackal had probably been attracted by the noise. Jackals...the ones they'd been sent to carry a message to by Inari, the patron god, the divine _protector_ of their race.

Anger swept through him at the thought, of how _Inari_ had sent them on the mission that had cost Kasshoku his life. It flickered and died as quickly as it had come. Even now, he couldn't lie to himself. They had known what jackals were like, what kind of reaction they could expect. Jackals were arrogant, prideful creatures; they wouldn't back down in the face of a threat unless it was blatantly, _blatantly_, obvious that they were outmatched, and then they were the biggest cowards known to kitsune. They should have asked for another yonbi, or perhaps even for Inari to send a gobi of his own to deal with this.

The chakra signature stopped just inside the leading edge of the forest fire's devastation, a few burning trees the only thing standing between it and an orange kitsune who couldn't care less.

It had been his overconfidence in their abilities, his belief that together they were invincible, that had prevented him from letting go of his pride and asking for more kitsune to accompany them. Inari would have granted the request; Inari had, in fact, _offered_ to send more with them. And been refused by two kitsune, equally assured of their own immortality. Deimos had been so certain that his skill, his excellence and ingenuity with chakra, would see them through this, as it had so many other tasks, so many other battles. But he hadn't been good enough, had he? Maybe if he'd spent more time experimenting with wind instead of fire, he would have known how to stop Kasshoku's fall.

But...he still couldn't lie, even to himself. Even when it would have felt so good to have someone to blame, even, no, _especially_ if it were him. That way, even if things had ended poorly, they had ended poorly because _he_ had been in control. He could have done something else and changed the way things had gone. It wouldn't be fate, or destiny.

Kasshoku had been just as guilty of that overconfidence as Deimos.

He could feel, at the back of his mind, something buzzing, something building. It must be the chakra signature, the one that he refused to acknowledge. The damned thing should know when to leave him alone. Its comrades had already taken Kasshoku; just leave him alone, he'd suffered enough. Deimos could recognize the general feel of what was happening; the jackal, seeing Deimos unmoving, was preparing everything for one all or nothing attack.

If it hit him, he would die. Not even at full strength would he be able to withstand a blast with that much chakra behind it. He knew it was coming, he knew he needed to move, _now._

But somehow...

The chakra peaked, the sheer mass of energy contained within the attack that was aimed at him a nearly painful buzz in the back of his mind.

Somehow...

There was a loud boom as the last of the jackals launched its attack. The very air seemed to scream with pain at having to conduct such a massive amount of energy.

Somehow...he just didn't care. The only things in his world were Kasshoku's body and the happy future he'd taken for granted. He looked down at the broken body of his friend, the body that, like his dreams, had moments ago been whole.

He was strangely detached as he felt his doom rushing towards him. His eyes were drawn, as if by a force beyond his control, to Kasshoku's stomach. The snapped, mangled top half of the jackal's skull could be seen, shattered teeth buried to the gums in Kasshoku's side. The bottom half of the jaw had snapped off and been crushed when Kasshoku landed.

The jackal...biting Kasshoku. Taunting his one true friend, his brother in all but name. Even in death, the jackal managed to have the last laugh, flaunting its victory by striking a final, immortal pose of violence against Kasshoku.

The blast of chakra was close enough for Deimos to feel the heat, feel the crackling shocks and heat as bits of chakra that the jackal hadn't quite been able to contain broke apart from the beam and superheated the atmosphere. The beam rushed onwards, trying to destroy him and the last remnant of Kasshoku still in this world.

Staring at those teeth for an instant that lasted an aeon, Deimos felt an uncontrollable rage built in his bones, spread to his blood, and course to his entire body with an incredible speed that made the screaming ball of energy seem motionless. Kasshoku hadn't died because Deimos had failed him. Kasshoku hadn't died because Inari sent them on a mission. Kasshoku had died because _jackals killed him._

Eyes he hadn't consciously closed snapped open, deep orange irises shining, as if the surge of rage fueled energy rushing through Deimos' body was leaking from every pore, every cut, every tiny opening in his body, even the holes of his pupils. Looking down at Kasshoku's body, all five of his tails lashing, a howl of endless, unimaginable rage tore itself from his throat, resounding from the cliff walls, seemingly shaking the very fabric of reality with its power.

The world went white as the jackal's attack struck Deimos in the back, continuing forward slightly as he left a fox shaped hole in the beam, which had been infinitesimally weakened by the leakage of energy into heat and light as it traveled. It was still strong enough to obliterate every last trace of one, beloved yonbi kitsune.

* * *

Trouble's legs shook with exhaustion, and he closed his mouth, which still burned from the power of the blast he'd summoned from it. That had taken everything he had, but the last of the damned yonbi was dead. So were all of the jackals Trouble had been sent to hunt down the kitsune with. 

He really didn't care about that one way or the other. On the one hand, if the jackals had lived, they could have eventually become competition. However, they hadn't, and now Trouble would have to deal with the Gobi's displeasure.

His legs gave out, unable to uphold his weight any longer. Trouble closed his eyes, able to feel and hear the blood pounding in his head. His stomach still tingled from the adrenaline rush. Taking a few unsteady breaths, Trouble tried to calm his racing heart.

He'd done it. The kitsune were dead. He wasn't. When you really thought about it, that was all that really mattered, wasn't it?

A frightening sound made itself known to Trouble's ears.

_Pash._

The sound of a footstep in the ash that was all that remained between him and the obliterated bodies of the yonbi.

_Pash_.

It was getting closer.

_Pash. Pash. Pash._

The sound stopped, and Trouble struggled for a moment to overcome his fear. Swallowing convulsively, uncontrollably, he opened his eyes.

Two deep red eyes, the color of fresh blood, dominated his world. Everything else faded away. There was only The Eyes.

Unconsciously, his mouth moved into a high pitched, submissive growl. He had one question. _Who...what...are you?_

The Eyes didn't answer, and Trouble's gaze drifted to the body around The Eyes. A long snout housing an endless array of cruelly sharp teeth and a barely seen tongue that Trouble could _feel_ wanted to taste his blood. Orange fur the color of dried blood, unmarked by any of the ash and soot, completely immaculate in the devastation of the forest. Most importantly of all though, were the tips of five separate tails pointed at him, chakra swirling chaotically about them.

The mouth housing The Eyes moved, throat vibrating and sounds echoing into the utter silence of the world, Trouble's world, which contained only The Eyes and the body that housed them.

It took him a full ten seconds to recognize the sounds as a growl and a short, distinctive bark. _Your end._

The chaotic chakra in the tails ceased its futile attempts to contain itself and blasted forwards, passing by the gobi kitsune's ears as it rushed towards Trouble.

His eyes didn't widen in fear, though he closed them in relief when he saw the oncoming attack. Now he wouldn't have to see The Eyes any more, and when you really thought about it, that was all that really mattered, wasn't it?

* * *

Kabe leaned up against the gate he was set to guard, out of things even mildly interesting to stare at now that the sun had set. His name wasn't really Kabe, but he took gate duty so often that the other jackals had jokingly taken to calling him "Kabe" or "wall." He personally didn't care; it was nigh impossible to earn the Gobi's displeasure by standing sentry, and quite possible to earn his appreciation for performing a task that so many others detested. 

So what if it was boring? He got to stand there, letting his mind drift, all day long, and if he so chose he could focus his ears onto the words of the villagers inside the walls. Reporting sedition had earned him more than one reward from the Gobi, even as Kabe watched him maim others for failing more difficult, combat oriented tasks.

Speaking of combat oriented tasks, Kabe wondered what had happened to that crew the Gobi had sent after the kitsune. Kabe was mildly disappointed at that; he'd been at the gate when the kitsune came in and they'd at least been polite when they answered his questions, even if they'd tried to awe him with the name Inari.

Honestly though, what was the Gobi thinking? Kabe had been in Matsuyama fifteen hundred years ago. He'd seen the Night of Outfoxed Tyrants, as the new, pro Inari government had called the revolt. Inari was that powerful as a mere _concept_ in the heads of the people. Whether Inari existed as a god or not was a moot point. People believed he did, acted as if he did, and therefore...he did. In a way, believing in the god made it realer than the god could ever hope to be isolated, unworshipped and unknown.

He should really start writing this down one day. Some of the things he came up with while standing guard duty were, frankly, works of philosophical genius. The problem was that those of his race didn't read...and there wasn't much of a market in books for the tailed beasts anyway. If he published his ideas among humans though...disguised in parables and a fantasy setting...that could work.

His ramblings eventually turned to the wall itself. Honestly, why did they have a wall? It was made of _wood_, which could _burn_, and they were picking a fight with kitsune, a race of _fire users._ If they were going to build anything it should have been made of stone, or a massively high dirt embankment. Stone would be better though; dirt could be dug through and the sheer amount of it involved in creating a wall of any size would be ridiculous.

Not as ridiculous as the spikes they'd placed against the base of the wall though. Those were, without a doubt, the single most useless portions of the wall. Sure, they might slow down somebody who was trying to climb the wall...for about two seconds. Then they would jump over the spikes, or sidle between them and get to the wall, and that was if they were just a human.

Sometimes Kabe thought the Gobi was more after style than substance. The grand marble statues (all of the Gobi) for instance, were actually hollow, made of plaster, and had a fairly weak illusion cast over them to make them seem majestic and well crafted, neither of which were accurate descriptions of the statues. Hmmm, maybe that could go into his book as well. "The grandiose self-delusions of the powerful" sounded dramatic. Could probably make a chapter out of that. But did he want to? It was mostly the powerful and well educated who could read and had the time to do so. Perhaps he should alter it to "The simple minded blindness of the peasants" or something along those lines. Nothing like stroking egos to sell more copies.

A figure walking up the path towards Cynopolis interrupted the train of thought, and Kabe, in a rare moment lacking any slothfulness, straightened up and walked away from the comfortable gate to interrogate the newcomer.

Kabe took a moment to study the man as he approached. Damn, he was a big one! Standing a foot over the jackal, who was taller than most of the humans he'd seen, the broad shoulders of the red haired man put most blacksmiths to shame. Hopefully the man had come to take up some sort of manual labor - he was probably worth three men! Then again, by the prideful, slightly arrogant stance and the angry jutting of his jaw, he would probably cause enough trouble for three men anyway.

Sighing inwardly (why did everyone look like they wanted to cause trouble for him?) Kabe doggedly began to say the same thing he did every time someone wanted to enter the village.

"Name and reason for visi-_hukgha_" was all he got out before the man, long, thick, calloused fingers wrapped firmly around Kabe's throat, raised him into the air. Kabe dropped the illusion, but the man wasn't even phased, merely throwing Kabe in the direction of the wall before he could do any damage.

Then the man walked into the village, and Kabe did nothing to stop him. Kabe had landed on the ridiculous, useless spikes placed at the base of the wall. From the wetness he could feel on his back, and the fact that he couldn't feel anything below his rib cage, one of them had gone through his spine.

So this was dying? Interesting. Kabe felt no pain, although he could have been in too much agony to comprehend it. Such a shame he would never get to write about it though, the fact that being impaled in multiple places, paralyzed, and bleeding to death was painless would probably astound his readers. Another shame - he'd never gotten around to writing that book!

Kabe continued to ramble on, lamenting things left undone, wondering curiously about the nature of death, even as he felt the cold blanket of death seep into his bones. His last thoughts were ones of gratitude.

He'd landed face down - he couldn't see the sky. If the constant flare of light as bright as midday wasn't his final delusion - people did mention tunnels of "light" after all - then the entire town must be burning. The explosions and screams that could be heard between the last, ragged beats of his heart seemed to encourage the theory.

But the screams, the light, the massive heat, and the near tangible sense of _power_ all faded into a comfortable, soothing, omnipresent darkness. Had he been alive, Kabe might have complained about being unable to share the feeling with the readers he'd never gained.

* * *

Deimos stood at the edge of the kindling that had been Cynopolis. Not one stone remained atop another, not one board remained unbroken. It looked like the entire town had been struck by a dozen tornadoes. 

For a month. Before the hurricane rolled in, finishing the job.

Perhaps a hurricane was a bad storm comparison. Hurricanes imply water, of which there was none. The ground had been scorched down to the bedrock, which had begun to crack under the extreme, dry heat. The very air seared the lungs, and the sky had been cleared of clouds, leaving the half moon to shine ethereal light down on the devastation, giving the entire scene an element of the unreal, as if it were nothing more than some crazed artist's vision of the apocalypse.

At the other end of the wreckage stood the Gobi, the only other living creature within a mile. They'd made sure of _that_ within the first two exchanges of power, and that had just been testing the other's capabilities.

Deimos had never felt so alive. Liquid power flowed through his veins, throwing the world into sharp focus while at the same time eliminating everything that didn't matter. And all that mattered was himself and the jackal that would soon join its fellows in oblivion. For the first time since Kasshoku's death, Deimos felt right. He was doing what needed to be done, righting a wrong committed by the Gobi.

Both had abandoned their human forms, letting their true forms show, letting the nature of the beast be revealed to the world. The Gobi had mottled brown fur with an occasional spot of black, while Deimos' fur had only darkened to a tinge that was almost but not quite red - the color of dried blood.

The wind created by the explosive force of their attacks had blown away all the smoke, so nothing impeded Deimos' view of the Gobi's grin. He found himself grinning back, feral mirth surrounding him in a mad haze. The two had cast aside all higher aspersions, all claims of higher being. The two enemies were closer to each other than either could have imagined, for they were one with the beast within. The same primal instinct that drives all of life, that destroys everything but the here and now, was all that remained of both combatants.

Here and now, there was only the fight, the crux of existence: live or die. Nothing more. And they would have nothing less.

Deimos struck the air between them with his tails, fire as bright as the sun flying to his enemy. The Gobi pounded the ground, bringing up a massive block of slightly curved rock that deflected the fire to each side, the passing flames that came nowhere near licking his flesh still scorching in their mad heat.

Then the stone wall exploded forwards, fire-hardened spears of rock shooting at Deimos like a volley of deadly rain. He merely roared a laugh at the attack, deflecting many, ignoring the few that struck him. The chakra dancing over his fur rejected them soon enough, shoving the tiny, inconsequential pinpricks of discomfort out of his body, leaving only a few puncture wounds that hadn't even penetrated deep enough to draw blood.

Deimos lost himself in the fight, the attack and counter, the constant movement to avoid the end, to cling to life that much longer. The battle of the titans raged on, spreading from the now nonexistent ruins of Cynopolis and into the countryside. The Gobi needed more earth to counter Deimos' fire; Deimos needed to kill the Gobi.

He heard a massive cracking behind him, and Deimos turned, eyes widening. The Gobi had collapsed a square kilometer of cliff wall to crush the kitsune. Deimos turned his tails, jerking chakra away from the torrents of flame he'd been chasing the jackal with and turning their power towards incoming death.

A drill of air formed above his body not a moment too soon. The cliff collapsed around the drill, but the sheer force of it still pushed Deimos down into the ground, claws piercing the bedrock. The cliff seemed to come down at him forever, the drill of air destroying the portions that would strike him while the rest crashed to the ground around him in a rising tomb.

What seemed like days later, the cliff stopped coming, and Deimos released control of the drill, panting heavily. Staring up at the tunnel of rock that stood over him, Deimos' mind went blank. He was trapped, his enemy beyond his reach. Even now the Gobi could be making his escape.

No. There would be no escape for the Gobi. He pushed every ounce of chakra he could to his tails, straining against natural limits, against his body telling him "that's not possible."

He felt two somethings behind his eyes give, felt energy surge through his body, making his previous strength seem like that of a porcelain doll: fragile and nonexistent. But it wasn't enough.

A knot of tension in his neck he hadn't felt before disappeared, and suddenly the world was in sharper focus. Deimos kept pouring chakra into his tails, draining the rest of his body for one cataclysmic strike.

Two more little balls of resistance in his chest were swept away in the tide of his wrath, and Deimos breathed deeper, as if he could take the air itself into his body and shove it into the building attack in his tails. The world seemed to slow down, and he flexed his knees, soaring a hundred meters into the air, landing on top of the cliff. The Gobi looked on in awe, grin widening at the newfound strength of his opponent. Deimos ignored him; the Gobi would cease to exist soon enough.

The numbness of his stomach, brought on by the constant adrenaline rush, was swept away as he felt another bit of resistance to his will snap. His body's demands were nothing compared to his anger's needs. The chakra in his tails began to overflow, and he brought his tails down to the front of his open mouth, using it as an anchoring point. Teeth shined in the daylight of the impossibly bright ball of energy he was creating.

He needed more power. He strained, but this time his body fought harder - it had lost the first six battles to his will, and was determined to stop him, to keep him within the limits of the possible.

His body gave, and as if a dam had burst, he felt power rushing towards the rapidly growing ball of pure power. He knew what he was doing, knew what happened to those who opened the Eight Celestial Gates, the automatic limits that kept one from the bounds of the impossible.

For Deimos, the impossible was nothing. There was only the molten river of his impassioned fury and the steely core of will that guided it.

He wanted more, wanted to be _sure_ that the Gobi would die in this last attack, but the Eighth Gate was like none before it, taking more than ten times as much energy to open as the rest combined. He didn't have the time to crack open the final door between him and omnipotence, but he had to make sure he attacked before the Gobi got away.

As if there was any chance of that.

The ground beneath him began to crack under the mass of the energy in his attack, or maybe it was the relatively tiny wisps of power that were leaking from his body, each enough to fry a small lake into vapor.

One exhalation, one roar, and the chakra raced to the Gobi, impossibly swift, the speed distorting the energy itself as it sped towards the jackal. There was no time for movement, no time for a counter, for a reaction. No time to blink, no time to scream.

The massive attack struck, and the world exploded into blindingly white light. Deimos almost wished for the sun to appear in front of him, to block the blinding rays with its comparatively dim brilliance. All thoughts of the Gobi disappeared; if one atom of the jackal remained intact Deimos would be surprised.

As he was hurled into the air, the thundering eruption of power from his attack seemingly splitting the earth itself in twain. Deimos shut his eyes against the light, to no effect. The light shone through his eyelids as if they weren't even there, and he could feel himself tumbling through unending, painful radiance.

Then his body struck the ground, and his head slammed against small rocks and something else that yielded, but was still bone shatteringly hard as he skidded and rolled for what seemed like forever.

He stopped when his head struck a large rock directly in the path of his slide, and he heard a deep, dull crack.

Even as he sank into unconsciousness, the agonizing light he'd created followed him, refusing him the soothing presence of darkness. Had he been capable of thought, Deimos would have cursed. As it was, it didn't appear as if he would ever be thinking coherently again.

* * *

**Author's Notes**: Some of this is actually interesting this time. Mostly the last three paragraphs before the Temp Notes. 

Congratulations to JLHERC on successfully completing the "guess what novel inspired Overlay" contest! It was Magician: Master, by Raymond Feist.

To those whom I told the Deimos pairing would kick off in this chapter...I delayed it to the next chapter, as there's enough shit in here.

That entire thing with Kakashi was pure inspiration. I had planned nothing along those lines, least of all his "It's all my fault" stoic personality. But...you know, it fits him. He claims to have no precious people, and remains a mysterious, somewhat cold enigma throughout the series. Bursts of compassion show through, but in the end he thinks of himself as "Commander" and his students as "soldiers."

...yes, Kakashi did just completely forget about Naruto to go angst in front of the memorial stone.

That entire thing with Deimos frying the jackals' skulls was my excuse for explaining how I think Jyuuken affects the chakra system. It took away slightly from the drama of the moment, but I liked the overall effect. Speaking of overall effect, I'd like to point out the line, "The ground beneath him began to crack under the mass of the energy in his attack..." Mass is energy, as stated by Einstein's famous formula: Energy equals Mass times the Speed of Light squared. (Which means that Mass equals Energy divided by the Speed of Light squared.) To give you an idea, I've heard that there is roughly one kilogram of mass in the energy of a 250 megaton nuclear explosion. If a beam of pure energy has noticeable mass, _it is a motherfucker of an attack._ Remember how I described the idyllic forests, farmland, and peaceful grasslands that Deimos initially encountered in the jackals' territory? The jackals' territory was in the southwest part of the continent. Today, that is Wind Country, the desert. The "something else that yielded, but was still bone shatteringly hard" was the tiny bits of sand that were all that remained of the area's bedrock after the attack - the dirt had already been melted or used by the Gobi to defend against flames.

For those of you wondering what the time exchange is, for every second that passes in the real world, one month passes in the flashback world. Therefore, an hour is roughly 300 years, and it was midnight in the beginning of the Deimos scene. It was almost seven PM in the previous scene, meaning more than 1500 years have passed. I expect the Deimos arc to wrap itself up within twenty-four hours, or 7200 years.

RAWR NEW CHAPTER OUT IN TIME FOR NaNoWriMo! That's National Novel Writer's Month, known in some cultures as November. That's why I didn't wait until tomorrow, a Saturday, like normal. I'm also taking the SAT tomorrow, so I wanted to get this done so I wouldn't be distracted during the test. Wish me luck!

**Temporary Notes**: Same as announcements, I just renamed them. These shall be removed when the next chapter is uploaded because they're pointless self gratification where I tell you how awesome I am.

The area the fight scene takes place in is based on a _real_ area that I recently visited. The points of interest are not spaced out correctly, because I don't exactly have a map of the place, but some things were spot on - I brought a camera. For reasons of maintaining my personal security, that place will not be revealed. Yes, Trouble's "no" line is from Pirates of the Caribbean. Also, the little blurb on animal tone of voice? I didn't make that up; I saw an article on it in the reading comprehension portion of one of my SATs. Speaking of which, I'll be taking an SAT tomorrow, at the ungodly hour of eight AM. I go to sleep at five AM! What are these people trying to do, kill me?

By the way, what did you all think of Kabe? I purposely made him as innocuous, dull, and innocent as possible in order to make the fact that he was violently killed that much more evil.

I can't wait for chapter...nine, or thereabouts, when this entire Deimos arc ends. When I get to explain all of the hints I've been dropping for the Epic Conclusion that nobody has recognized as hints. (Epic Conclusion of the arc that is. There's no way in hell I can wrap everything up in four more chapters. There's two more arcs after that.) The major bad guys have already been decided.

Every time you don't leave a review for a story, a ninja cuts off a kitten's head and doesn't even care. SAVE THE KITTENS! REVIEW!

My disappointment at the lack of random pointless flames has disappeared. Two of them, from different sources, for generally the same reason. "It's not centered around Naruto wtf!" YAY I'M GOOD ENOUGH TO HATE! (Angsts happily in a corner) Actually I don't really angst. If I was ever really sad I'd probably end up stealing my brother's iPod and trying to do the moonwalk to Thriller. Shame I never learned how to do the moonwalk...so it looks kinda crappy...but it's really hard to be sad about anything when you're making a complete idiot out of yourself on purpose.

As a preventative response, no, the story thus far doesn't center around Naruto. For the foreseeable future, that will continue. I'll post the argument for why. In the anime, it is said many times that Naruto is the type of person who could never be the main character of a show. While Kishimoto is doing it jokingly, I take it seriously. Naruto isn't the main character, he's the protagonist. (There's a difference.) The MC is the character around whom everything centers. Naruto's personality is a result of growing up with everyone hating him because of Kyuubi. Sasuke went all angsty over his inability to defeat Itachi after Itachi beat the shit out of him when Itachi was there to get...Kyuubi. Akatsuki is after the tailed beasts, among which is...Kyuubi. See a pattern? Naruto is the protagonist, the hero, the guy we want to win. But the events of the series center around the demon fox. (Comparison: Darth Vader is the Main Character of Star Wars, because everything Luke and Co. do is in reaction to Vader's actions.)

Reviews: (These shall also be removed when the next chapter is uploaded.)

**HoshiTheHorse**: This is what I meant when I said you'd hate me for the Kakashi confronts Naruto scene. Or rather...the lack of one. No confrontation with the evil Kyuubi chakra, sorry!

"I don't see why you care" - Anonymous Reviewer: I haven't forgotten the power of the Bijuu. I'm merely treating them on the same power scale as ninjas. The Nine Bijuu of canon would be the bestial equivalent of Kages, while most are far weaker than those special, powerful beasts. (Anything with more than five tails could still give a Kage a fight for his life though.) The power also grows exponentially at certain points. (Cheap excuse of my wonky power scaling.)


	6. Overlay Outline

**Announcement and Explanation!**

I was recently asked by a reader when I was ever going to update Overlay. Since I'd put the fic on a permanent hiatus, I was quite perplexed until I actually went and glanced at Overlay. To my shock, I'd actually left that bit promising a complete rewrite up! Apologies for that, comrades.

I really did try to write an outline out. The problem was, the more I wrote out, the stupider it sounded. So here's how things would have gone in a brief summary:

-Deimos would have woken up in a temple of Inari, argued with the god, and gone out blaming Inari. Eventually though, he would recover from the death of Kasshoku. He'd have actually met and fallen for another kitsune over the course of the next two or three chapters.

-During those two or three chapters, a black kitsune would be introduced. Deimos wouldn't like him, they'd come to within an inch of fighting, and would go their separate ways because they would probably kill each other if they fought. (And the gods frown on direct combat between beings of their strength - Deimos kind of turned a fifth of the continent to desert when he killed the Gobi. Woops.) Never bothered to think of a name for the black kitsune.

-Deimos decides to settle down at a small human town. He can screw around with humans and doesn't have to work very hard to get food. In the natural course of things, he becomes viewed as a sort of guardian spirit/leader figure. His main assistant is a man with blond hair, blue eyes, and is named Namikaze Arashi. (Arashi was the fanon name for the Yondaime before it was revealed. There's no other real reason.) For pure amusement, Deimos teaches the humans some of the basics of chakra. Arashi applies it to seals, and Deimos is vaguely interested with the possibilities, but not overly so. The man is smart, but still only human.

-Eventually, Inari would summon all the kitsune together for a meeting. This is rather unheard of, Deimos is confused but goes along with it anyway. He's had little contact with the god since Kasshoku's death. He's kind of forgiven the god over the intervening years, or at least doesn't actively hate him any more. But when Inari's spirit form appears...it's a ten tailed black kitsune. The same one that Deimos nearly fought with. The fox announces that he's killed Inari and his taking his name and position. The spirit form disappears. All kitsune now owe him their allegiance. Very few are happy about this.

-Two kitsune are assigned to "inspect" Deimos' town and report back to Inari. They arrive when Deimos is out, probably talking to other foxes about what they're going to do about the new management. He heads home, resigned to at least nominally submitting to the god's will. Problem is, when he gets home, the kitsune he fell in love with and the two kits they'd had are dead. When he approaches the bodies, a trap is activated. A black "tail" of chakra overwhelms him, and starts to take over his mind. Deimos reverts to human form, trying to slow down the progress of the tail by making its physical form disappear. It works, to a limited extent, and he shows up at Arashi's door sweating uncontrollably, fighting the foreign urge to burn the whole town to the ground. Arashi manages to seal the tail at the cost of his own life. Deimos passes out.

-Deimos goes back to ruling over the town. Inari isn't much more of a problem, besides giving him the occasional insane urge from the sealed tail. Still, Deimos wants vengeance. He takes a member of the Hyuuga clan, who have the ability to create undetectable "portals" anywhere within a mile to see through, and warps him into an Uchiha using the power of the dark tail. The Uchiha were specifically designed to be able to rip holes in the dimensional walls. Their other abilities were side effects. Deimos creates more, and all are pleased with the transformation, considering that they _had_ been Branch House and are now Main House of a new family. Deimos lets them establish themselves in the village for a few years, get families, etc. Then Deimos takes the Uchiha to the symbolic mirror at Inari's temple, and they manage to rip open a portal to the divine plane where Inari lives, intent on killing the bastard. Deimos, before entering, swears that he will not leave without killing Inari. The original Uchiha, Madara, immediately betrays Deimos and portals him out of the room. Kitsune are creatures impossibly bound to their oaths, and Deimos just broke his. The stress of the broken oath snaps Deimos' soul in half. One half of the soul becomes the Kyuubi, and goes on a rampage right where he appears - Konoha, which, long ago, was the village Deimos ruled over. (Time flows at a much slower rate in the divine plane than on the mortal one.) Naruto is born dead, and the Yondaime uses he corpse as the container for the Kyuubi. The Kyuubi's soul is followed by the other half of Deimos - which infuses the area of Naruto's body around the seal, and becomes "Naruto."

-Naruto wakes up from the flashbacks. Using his newfound knowledge, he shatters the seal and forces the Kyuubi to reunite with him. Deimos is reborn.

-Deimos makes a deal with the Shinigami. "It is the tradition that when one kitsune kills Inari, they become Inari. They become divine. Help me kill Inari, and I become a god. I will give you my 'divine' soul and his. Two gods for the price of one." The Shinigami agrees, they easily defeat Inari, and Deimos pulls a bait-and-switch at the last minute by forfeiting his divinity. Can't very well give up his divine soul if it isn't divine. The Shinigami departs with Inari's soul, mildly amused at Deimos' boldness.

And here we have problems. Where to go from there? Nowhere, really, and it's a horrible place to end because it raises far more questions than it answers. What does Deimos do now? He's completely incapable of having a Naruto-esque relationship with the people of Konoha; he's far more than Naruto now. Similarly, Konoha would have difficulty accepting him as something OTHER than Naruto or the Kyuubi. There was also going to be stuff about Tsukiyomi being the way gods wage war - create an alternate dimension where you're both omnipotent. Winner is the one who kills the others mental representation, thus destroying their mind. Had no idea what I was gonna do with Sasuke and Sakura. Or Bull.

Well, it's late, but it's done. Your outline. Overlay is now over. Questions, comments and reviews are welcome.


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